The Emperor's False Betrothed
A Fake Dating Fantasy in a Falling Empire

About this book:

In the crumbling heart of a dying empire, a single tax notice forces the most dangerous alliance of Vespera Linnea’s life. Ten years buried in the Imperial Archives have taught her that bureaucracy is the only law that matters—so when a predatory levy threatens her invalid father’s home, she doesn’t beg. She drafts a blood-sealed betrothal contract. Her counterfeit fiancé: Julian Vance, the disgraced cavalry captain who lost an army, his title, and very nearly his head. He needs a public trial to clear his name; she needs his noble shield to survive the month. It’s a transaction. A shield of paper and ink. Nothing more.

But the Chancellor’s Midwinter Masquerade doesn’t care about fine print. To walk the gilded halls of the Citadel as a betrothed couple is to step into a viper’s nest of spies, scapegoats, and the very nephew who ordered Julian’s ruin. Every dance is a deposition, every whispered exchange a legal maneuver, and the line between protecting each other and destroying each other thins with every masked waltz. Vespera wields precedent like a blade; Julian carries the ghosts of two hundred dead hussars. Neither expects the other to be the only solid ground in a city sliding into ruin.

As the empire’s fractures widen—frontier armies starving, refugees burning, the Emperor senile in his tower—their paper shield begins to crack under the weight of truth. The real dispatches from Oakhaven exist, buried in a vault the Chancellor would kill to keep sealed. Finding them means risking the only safety either has known. But in a world where laws are written by the powerful, the most treasonous act of all might be choosing each other over the survival they so carefully contracted for.