Vidiana Toraven was chosen by the bastard prince. She has cursed that day ever since.

Once the most promising necromancer of her generation, she now spends too much time counting coins and deciding whether she can afford dinner or magical crystals.

Usually, the answer is neither.

Still, she has a job, a roof over her head, and a perfectly healthy ten-year grudge against the man who got her exiled.

Then, the town’s healer turns up dead, and the investigation leads Vidiana to the Royal Ledger—an artefact that absolutely, definitely, under no circumstances should have left the Royal Vault.

Unfortunately, Vidiana is the Warden.

Which means the dead woman is her problem. The stolen artefact is her problem. And when certain people start filling her morgue with bodies…

They are her problem too.

Especially Prince Zoran Valentian, whose claim to the throne hangs on the Ledger’s choice.

His touch completes their forbidden bond, but she’d rather kiss a corpse than give the Ledger of Souls to the bastard who destroyed her.

Yet when danger closes in, Zoran shields her and asks her to trust him.

But trusting him could kill her. And Vidiana did not survive ten years in exile to burn with the kingdom that condemned her.