Princess Bellanova has spent years surviving on her own, forced to flee her kingdom in order to escape the curse that put the rest of her royal family into a death-like slumber and set their lands to rotting. After spending her exile honing her skills with her knives alongside her innate necromancy powers, Nova has earned a reputation as one of the fiercest outlaws the empire has ever suffered.
But soon she'll be the fiercest outlaw who ever died.
A death that will be on purpose.
For rumor has it that the true cause of her family's demise-Luminor, the Blade of Light-is buried deep in the belly of the underworld. Stealing that blade back into the realm of the living will mean a chance at undoing the curses it left, restoring her family, her reputation, and her kingdom to life.
The only things standing in her way are the endless twists and turns of the underworld, its terrifying guardians, unpredictable magic...and Aleksander, the infamous Light King himself-keeper of the blade, and the one who wielded it on the night of her family's ruin.
King Aleks has spent nearly a decade trapped in the underworld, a phantom of his former self, unable to truly die. When Nova crash lands into his purgatory-an inexplicably bright and lively being in a sea of endless dead things-he begins to dream of the world above for the first time in ages.
He needs her to get him back to that world above. She needs him to undo the curse. But as the two form a reluctant alliance that soon blooms into something dangerously deeper, they find themselves unraveling ancient magic and dark secrets that will have greater consequences than either of them could have ever imagined...