At twenty-one, Braun Verusious was a stable boy with nothing but ambition, a temper, and the audacity to ask a king for his daughter’s hand.

Your father laughed in his face.

Braun was dragged from the palace, humiliated, and ordered never to return.

Twelve years later, the gates open again.

This time, Braun arrives with an army.

He is no longer poor. No longer powerless. No longer asking.

Now he is the King of Drakoor, ruler of three kingdoms, a former commander feared across the realms as The Butcher. Kings have lost crowns to him. Armies have broken under him. Entire courts go silent when he walks into a room.

And he has come back for you.

Not because he spent twelve years pining for you. He didn’t. Braun has had women, wars, wealth, and more power than your father ever dreamed of.

He came back because your father once told him he could never have you.

Braun intends to prove him wrong.

You leave for Drakoor, or your father risks losing far more than his daughter.

What begins as an old grudge quickly becomes something far messier: jealousy, power struggles, dangerous attraction, palace rivalries, brutal arguments, unwanted intimacy, and the slow realization that neither of you is anything like the person the other remembers.

Braun came to settle a score.

He did not expect you to become one.