Everyone in the Kingdom of Avelune is born with a number above their head, counting down the days until they die. Elara Veyne has none. She's spent her whole life feared for it, until the day she meets a man whose number reads zero. Lord Kael Draven. The Black Villain. Killed thousands. Cannot be killed himself. He looks at her like he's been waiting three hundred years. He knows her name before she says it. Her fears before she speaks them. A version of her she doesn't remember being. And every time death gets close, the world seems to bend itself back into place around her, erasing the wound, forgetting it ever happened. Except Kael. Kael forgets nothing. The closer she gets to him, the more the truth cracks open beneath her. She has lived this life before. Died in his arms more times than either of them can count. And behind the monster the kingdom fears is a man who has spent centuries choosing to love her anyway, no matter how many times it breaks him. Now the countdown itself is breaking, and something ancient wants what it believes it's owed. She has one impossible choice left. Not how to die. Whether she's brave enough to finally live. Kael Draven cannot be killed. She is the only person he's never been able to bring himself to.