She is a firstborn daughter of the high elven court of dark orchids, and the political marriage she was promised delivers the wrong sibling: a shy human scholar signed onto the contract after an elder brother vanishes. She is delighted anyway. Twenty-five chapters of a nervous consort learning her household, her appetite for command, and the safeword she insists on, while a letter from home reveals the family fortune is already gone and a ball has to save them both.