Love-forward emotional arcs.
Julian Aldric is very good at not wanting. Imogen Hartley is very good at leaving. When a six-day diplomatic secondment to Sorvaine becomes something neither of them planned for, the obstacles are real — a political marriage, a regency that cannot afford scandal, a father's illness that must stay quiet. The crown has always known what it requires of him. Whether he has ever known what he requires for himself is another question entirely.
He spent two thousand years making himself invisible. She spent fourteen months finding him anyway. Now Heaven is calling him home — but the only place he wants to be is with the woman who saw through every wall he built.
Lucien Aldric has spent thirty years performing the role of the spare. Isabelle Vauclaire was arranged to marry his brother, then arranged to marry him instead. The European press calls it the consolation match. Neither of them has accounted for what happens when two people who are very good at not being seen finally have nowhere else to look.