Ten kisses. One curse. Two hearts that defy fate.
Peace in Valdaren is counted, not prayed: ropes across doorways, salt on sills, a kettle breathing over banked coals. Veres, a soldier made Regent by writ, is tasked with turning mourning into order while the city splits between people who eat and people who pray. He answers with the unglamorous: bread, water, rotations, maps—use over spectacle.
What unsteadies him is not an enemy but a man: Lirian, the conquered river prince, both prisoner and temptation. His breath wakes oaths; his mouth once made a council choose law over blood. Their pact of ten kisses—meant to end in victory or death—becomes something more dangerous: devotion. Every touch draws blood. Every kiss is a rebellion. What began as conquest becomes confession, a forbidden tenderness burning under ice.
Around them, envy composes its choir. Mira stitches knives into veils and calls it mercy. Seros sells grief to crowds that want theatre more than bread. Priests dust stone and rehearse new verbs. Rumor climbs faster than ivy. And beneath the palace an old clause turns in its sleep: in famine, in siege, or when a king wastes... only the beloved may lift the heart. Breath shared. Name offered. Dawn.
The pyre takes a crown; the crowd calls omen. The inquest hunts poison; the streets hunt a story. When treachery wears loyalty's face and mercy becomes a crime, Veres must choose between the city that needs his restraint and the man he was never meant to love.
Enemies-to-lovers