Born to Serve Her

Vivien Winthrope found Jasper when she was eleven years old - half-starved, feral, eating from her family's rubbish heap - and she did what any sensible lord's daughter would absolutely not do: she kept him. Named him. Handed him a life with both hands and never once asked for anything back, because wanting something that badly from someone who had nothing felt like theft. For years, they circled each other at the edges of what was allowed - her, the girl who owned a piece of him she had no right to claim; him, the boy who would have given it freely if she'd only asked. But she didn't ask. And then he left to become a knight, and the letters never came, and then one grey morning a rider arrives with a royal seal and news that unmakes her entirely - Jasper is gone, and she never told him he was hers. Except grief, it turns out, is not the only thing waiting for her in the ruins of what they were. A king is coming to collect his bride. And the past, it seems, is not quite finished with Vivien yet.