January 4, 2025 · Book Review
by Carolina Monte
In the Queendom of Actasia, 165 years after a bloody uprising that stripped men of their wings, their rights, and their freedom, women alone hold magic, and every man is bought, chained, and “tamed” into servitude by the woman who purchases him. Nalla, the third daughter of a formidable General, comes of age and selects her first man from the pits: a defiant, caged prisoner known only by his number, who dares to look her in the eye when every other man keeps his gaze on the ground. That single act of defiance is deliberate. He’s chosen her specifically because she looks soft, and he plans to use her kindness to escape.
He does escape, on the very first night, knocking her unconscious and fleeing into the forest. What follows isn’t the story either of them expected. Nalla hunts him down herself rather than report the escape (which would mean his execution), and when she finally corners him, she chooses tending his wounds and asking his name over the punishment she’s been trained since childhood to deliver. The taming that follows is real, and so are its consequences, both in the bedroom and in a household, a family, and a queendom that has no room for what starts growing between them. As Nalla’s mother closes in with a deadline and a threat, the two are forced to reckon with what it would actually cost them, and everyone around them, to want something the law was built specifically to make impossible.
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