Iris Vesper was never a daughter; she was a commodity. In the shadowed spires of Abaddon’s Reach, the women of the elite are bred for a binary existence: to be playthings or incubators. In this cold, 18th-century landscape, Iris’s girlhood was merely a curriculum of absolute submission. By the time she was hammered onto the auction block, she had been molded into the perfect, silent servant; a masterpiece of obedience in a world that stifled the very idea of love.

Her buyers were the Blackwood brothers. Infamous and obscenely wealthy, they were said to have carved their path to power through their own father’s ribs. Yet, while the city recoils from them as monsters, Iris discovers a terrifying novelty within their estate; tenderness. Beneath the weight of their protection, her fear begins to warp into a dangerous, tangled loyalty and perhaps something even more treacherous; affection.

But in the Reach, peace is a haunting illusion. The brothers’ bloody ascension has left a trail of a bitter vendetta, and a rival Lord are now circling like wolves, desperate to dismantle the young usurpers. As Iris settles into a life she is only beginning to trust, she realizes she hasn’t been brought into a sanctuary; she has been drafted into a fortress under siege.

Now, Iris faces a new breed of terror. She must choose between the men who own her heart and the instinct to flee before the walls collapse. To stay is to risk the oncoming bloodshed; to leave is to abandon the only masters who ever treated her as more than an asset.