After a childhood curse leaves nineteen-year-old Elsie Rowan with a treatable cognitive and memory injury, her fiancé Felix Vale calls control 'protection' and treats her as a burden. Determined to prove she can travel on her own, Elsie helps another young woman escape a coerced marriage and is mistakenly taken to Blackthorn Castle, where she completes only a public Rose Vow with Felix's superior, Duke Adrian Blackthorn. Adrian is feared for the beast-like form he takes after dark, yet he is the first person who refuses to bind Elsie while her judgment is still recovering. As she undergoes treatment, learns to write, rejects a bribe, rides independently, and becomes entangled in a forbidden-magic corruption case, Felix returns to reclaim the woman he once discarded. Elsie must choose not simply between two men, but between control and a life in which her consent, treatment, and future belong to her.
