She married the man who took her throne. He swore not to touch her unless she asked.
A deposed queen marries the general who took her father's throne to break a curse — and finds her enemy keeps every promise he makes.
Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 49m
WarmSensual tension; intimacy fades to black.Yearning · Dark & dangerous · Sweeping
Death of a parent, Violence, Grief
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Dear Maeve,
I married the man who ended my father’s reign. I did it for a curse eating my kingdom from the roots up, not for anything softer, and I told him so before I signed my name to it.
Queen Isolde Marrow lost her throne, her father, and her army in a single night when General Thane Ashgrove led the coup that ended the Marrow dynasty. Three years later, with a wasting curse spreading from the old capital's thornwood border, Thane offers her an impossible bargain: marry him, rule beside him, and use the crown's old blood-magic to break the curse before it swallows both their kingdoms whole. Isolde accepts on one condition, that the marriage never becomes anything more than the alliance it is meant to be. Thane took the throne to stop a war Isolde's father was about to lose them all, not out of ambition, and he has spent three years being hated for a decision he would make again in a heartbeat. Ruling beside the woman whose father he killed was never meant to be easy, and it becomes unbearable in a different way entirely as Isolde's fierce, unyielding competence starts to look less like an enemy's weapon and more like the only thing holding either of their kingdoms together. As the thornwood curse reveals a darker truth about how Isolde's father really died, the marriage of convenience becomes the one alliance neither of them can afford to lose, to the curse, or to each other.
He kept a distance I hadn’t asked for and can’t fault him for keeping. He stood in my doorway on our wedding night and swore he would not touch me unless I asked him to, and meant it well enough that I lay awake afterward for reasons that had nothing to do with grief.
I still don’t know if that was relief or its opposite. I turn my mother’s ring and wait for the answer to arrive on its own. It hasn’t yet, and some nights I’m no longer certain I want it to.
From The Thornbound Court
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