by Katee Robert
First published 2020
She fell for Alaric, and now he is gone. The only way to buy his freedom is to sell herself at auction, and the only person who can arrange it is Ursa, the Sea Witch. Her father warned her to stay away from Ursa. She goes anyway. Ursa is stunning and manipulative, all red lips and smooth words, and the protagonist finds herself drawn in despite every instinct telling her to run. The plan feels clean on paper: raise the money, free Alaric, build the life she imagined. But Ursa is running a game far deeper than any auction, and Alaric, the man she crossed every line to reach, turns out to be something she did not expect. The villain she feared and the hero she trusted trade places, and she is left standing between them trying to figure out what she actually wants. Love and desire pull in directions that do not line up, and the cost of getting what she thought she wanted keeps rising. This is a dark retelling of a familiar story, built around desire, betrayal, and the question of who is really pulling the strings. Content note: emotional and financial parental abuse.
Genres: romance, fantasy, adult, adult-fiction, dark-fantasy, dark-romance
Vibes: atmospheric, betrayal-driven, dark, manipulative, morally-complex, sensual
Tropes: betrayal, enemies-to-lovers, love-triangle, morally-grey-characters
Setting: Sea
286 pages · Paperback · 978-1951329044
Content warnings: abuse, emotional-abuse