The Crown's Unwilling Shadow
A Fae Court Romantasy

About this book:

Junior Scribe Calla Price knows exactly what her future smells like: vinegar, dry rot, and forty silver pennies a month cataloging centuries of pickled cabbage receipts in the Imperial Library’s deepest vault. She doesn’t believe in the Fae—not since the Severance Treaty banished them behind the Veil four hundred years ago. But when a draft that shouldn’t exist leads her to a sealed chamber and a codex bound in living shadow, Calla accidentally breaks the oldest ward in the empire. She doesn't free the prisoner inside; she becomes his anchor. Now, a violet thread of magic stitches her mortal heart to the iron collar of Prince Julian of the Nightfall Court: a predator of smoke and starlight who hasn't drawn a free breath since the Mad King ruled.

Julian is furious, ancient, and entirely lethal—and he cannot move five paces without stopping Calla’s heart. Hunted by the sorcerers who imprisoned him and the crown that fears his return, they flee into the soot-choked streets of Oakhaven. She needs to keep her job and her life; he needs the names of the fifteen traitors who bound him, written in the blood-stained codex she left behind. With every step, the tether pulls tighter, bleeding his winter cold into her veins and her stubborn, ink-stained humanity into his frozen court manners. To survive the Ash Queen’s gathering storm, the archivist who fears overdue rent more than dark magic and the prince who views mortals as insects must unravel a conspiracy written in dust and starlight—before the collar burns them both to ash.

*The Crown's Unwilling Shadow* is a slow-burn, forced-proximity romantasy where a pragmatic heroine armed with a penknife and a devastating vocabulary tethers herself to a morally grey Fae prince. Perfect for fans of *A Court of Thorns and Roses* and *The Cruel Prince* who crave witty banter, high-stakes magical intrigue, and a romance that blooms in the cracks between duty and damnation.