Elina gave one forbidden night to a prince, bore him twins — and woke to find one son stolen, the other branded the proof of her "madness," and herself cast out to raise a dismissed, dragon-touched boy alone. Adrian is the young Dragon-King of Aldermere: cold, magnetic, and utterly walled off — and he doesn't remember her at all. So when hunger drives her to serve at his court, the plan is simple: get close enough to steal back her lost son — the golden prince the whole realm now calls his heir — and never let him learn who she is. But every hour at his side breaks the wrong heart, and the truth is closing in fast: her despised little boy is the true heir the sleeping dragon will wake for — and a counterfeit queen and a soulless regent will burn the realm to keep it buried. A love neither of them bargained for is about to cost him his crown, her the plan, and both of them the lie that this was ever only survival.
