Synopsis
For fifteen years, Isolde Verren has been the Imperial Registry's most flawless archivist — precise, contained, untouchable. A widow by official record, she has built a life on order, cold ink, and the comfortable lie that passion is a defect to be catalogued and filed away. Then her body betrays her. A stranger's voice in a buried chamber. A hand laid over a mark on her throat she never knew she carried. And the slow, terrifying recognition that her grief was never hers — it was implanted, and the husband she mourned may never have existed at all. Malakor knows who she was before the empire erased her. He knew the woman she's forgotten, the love she chose not once but twice. As the truth unravels thread by thread, Isolde must decide whether the woman she's become has any right to a love that belonged to someone else. A slow-burning tale of buried memory, dangerous desire, and the impossible question: can you fall for the man who remembers you better than you remember yourself?
