Avery Lane is a rising NYC executive with no time for fairy tales. She's juggling late-night coffee runs, cutthroat boardrooms, and a messy breakup. But one stormy night in Central Park, she takes shelter under an ancient stone archway only to stumble through it and awaken in a brutal medieval kingdom where magic is forbidden, women live under suffocating rules, and strangers are executed without question.

There, Avery meets Commander Kael Deyros, the kingdom's youngest war captain, a man bound by honor, law, and duty. She's everything he shouldn't protect-defiant, outspoken, dangerously foreign. Yet, instead of condemning her, Kael hides her, teaching her to survive in a land where her every word could be her death.