When Verbena thought about how she wanted her love story to bloom, she thought of pure and deep love. An forced marriage is far from what she had hoped for. As a Elder Bloodline daughter of the Court of Shadow's Keep, she must enter into a forced marriage with an old flame in a move her Father says is a means to forge an alliance. But who does she really need protecting from? The War of Annexation enacted by the Mainlanders recently ended, and her island continent she calls home is healing. The war almost tore the three magical courts apart, but is it really over? She's the first in 300 years to be blessed with astral travel, a blessing and a curse. It makes her a target for those who seek to use her as a weapon in a new war. a secret war. Her betrothed, High Lord Warrick of the Court of Voltundra, is war embodied. He is a violent temper with bloody knuckles and not the man she once knew. She finds herself in a battle of heart and mind, seeking answers to the past and making her own decisions about moving forward. Not everything she's heard in the bard songs and war stories are as they seem. She's torn. What does it mean if she chose to love a monster? She finds the keys to her own sanctuary, all her desires, buried deep in her own red, beating heart. All she has to do is make the choice. But doing so means she's stained in the red agony of love and ensnares her own destiny in the Red String of Fate.