About this audiobook

Three years ago she made a bargain with a hedge-spirit that she had no right to make. The memory surfaces every time Mirabel pushes through the back gate before dawn, every time her boots crush the frost-stiffened grass, every time the silver streak in her hair catches the last starlight. She was seventeen, desperate and stupid. Theo had coughed blood for the first time, and she promised the spirit her voice in exchange for a single stem of moon-bloom. It took the bargain and then laughed at her, because the fae cannot lie but they can leave out the parts that matter. The moon-bloom was already dead when she picked it. She had not read the fine print. The spirit had never said the flower would be alive. Now she slips through the gap in the hawthorn hedge, fingers finding the notch where generations of Ashworth women have worn a handhold. The cottage is dark behind her, Nan's candle not yet lit, Theo asleep with the quilt to his chin. He has maybe four good hours before the rattle starts again. Caspian is the one who can end it, and Caspian's price is a court appearance, a title she does not want and a set of rules she keeps breaking because nobody will explain them. What follows: the lie she built her life on, a door she swore she would never open, a bargain cut on the heath, a thorn in her side, a dance of unspoken rules, an isle of lost things, the weight of silver censure, and a friend in the dark who turns out to be arming the other side. *Barnaby had smuggled iron knives. He'd made deals with Rowena. He'd lied to her face, told her he was protecting her.* *Full court colours. Let them see we aren't afraid.* Fae fantasy romance with a mortal woman who bargained badly at seventeen, a brother whose lungs set every deadline in the book, a king whose court punishes ignorance as though it were insolence, explicit scenes, and a guaranteed happy ending.

Folklore Magic Supernatural Family Curses & Fate Adventure Isekai Royalty & Courts Betrayal