To save her brother, a magicless librarian must infiltrate a magical academy and trust a Dark Lord, in the first novel in a spellbinding new fantasy duology from the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip.

Elodie Kess is a librarian in a quiet seaside town on the far reaches of the kingdom. It's not adventure and whirlwind romance, but as a scholar of magic with a strange affliction that deadens spells upon her touch, reading about it is the closest she can get.

Her unremarkable life is upended when her brother Emmerick, an esteemed professor at the High Arcanum Conservatory, disappears alongside his coveted research. Knowing she's the only one who can save him, Elodie infiltrates the Conservatory glamoured as a graduate student. Her prime suspect: the school's most infamous professor, a centuries-old Dark Lord cursed to live as a cat.

When Elodie's affliction unexpectedly dispels his curse-revealing the disarmingly attractive man beneath-the two become unlikely allies. As they investigate Emmerick's disappearance, Elodie discovers the Dark Lord is nothing like the villain of legend-and soon finds herself risking not only her life, but her heart. Because while history may be written by its victors, every legend contains a grain of truth, and the Dark Lord was cursed for a reason . . .