On her wedding day, Natalie's groom sold her to pay his debt — pushed her to the floor at the feet of the most feared man in the empire.
Duke Damien. They call him the Butcher. He commands armies. He nails his enemies to city walls. And now, he owns her.
But on the ride to his estate, the Butcher collapses. Black blood. Poisoned blade. Three days untreated. Every soldier around him panics.
She doesn't.
Natalie was raised in a fallen noble house, but she knows medicine — and a dead duke is useless to her. So she picks up a blade, cuts open his wound, and saves the life of the man who bought her.
He wakes up furious. She doesn't flinch.
That's when he stops calling her "prisoner."
But Natalie carries something far more dangerous than courage — a golden deed her mother left behind, one that controls the empire's most vital sea route. Her coward ex-husband wants it. The crown wants it. Enemy nations want it.
And the only man standing between her and all of them? The monster she's starting to trust.
She was sold in a church. She'll walk back in on her own terms.
