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Serena Gelsomino is an orphaned fiorriee about to attend her first courting to find a fiorriee mate and Prytore master to serve. A ceremony of status, wits, and political matches, Serena’s first courting already exceeds expectations when she’s presented with a yellow dress, reserved for the elite, and catches the interest of Peyton and Prytore Keon of the esteemed Silviu House. As Serena learns what is to be expected of her once chosen, the stakes are raised even more when her identity is revealed as the rightful queen of the fiorriee people, and she finds her loyalty and love being tested.
Focusing on themes of power, control, and identity, this sci-fi fantasy novel follows one girl’s journey of survival as she finds her own path. Although the reader is kept in the dark in the beginning (much like the protagonist), the author makes up for it with exciting plot developments and titillating tension between the characters. The author has built a world in which two races previously at war coexist under a power structure and courtship ritual of subservience and pleasure. The Prytore believe in wealth as success, while the fiorriee derive pleasure from pain, and it is the creation of a slight, BDSM-tinged contract based on these facts that drive the repairing relationships between the two races. Coupled with a complicated warring history between the Prytore and the fiorriee, as well as Serena’s power, the author weaves a tale of rebellion that will have readers questioning who is in control all along.