The Splintered Princess

A magic dagger. A beautiful man. And me. We were a match made to be destroyed. The dagger lured me in with promises: I was meant to be an empress, not a simple, sequestered farm girl. And I—feckless, heedless, daring to dream of power and love—picked the dagger up. And I reached for him. Avid and ardent, we were vicious in strength and feral at heart. But he was trapped by the enemy and agonizingly tortured. While in captivity, he tore a strip from his soul and hurled it across the kingdoms to find me. It stayed with me, but this is all that remains of the reckless boy he was. And I cannot embrace a spirit; he cannot kiss away my anguish. I vow to find his physical self, but before I can, my country's overlord kidnaps my family. He forces me into a charade. Because I resemble his daughter, the current heiress to the kingdom, I must become her decoy and train in secret in order to guard his queen. While I struggle not to lose hope, the strip of spirit that remains of my beloved urges me to stay true, to trust the promises of the dagger. But his real self has warped into an atrocity who goads me from afar, who dares me to defy him and taunts me with my downfall. And the dagger? It has promised only one thing from the start: for me to become an empress, I must use the dagger to kill someone I love. NOTE: This is not a fluffy, written-for-tropes fantasy romance, but a fantasy (with a love story) where no one's survival is guaranteed except the endgame couple. At the end of this book, one of her potential loves will die, one's survival is debatable, and one will live to torment her. Don't say I didn't warn you.