Vine of Hearts

Briony Rosewood serves the woman who betrayed her family and destroyed her kingdom. She has no choice in it. To stay alive, she has to share both her magic and her heartbeat with Toven Hearst, who was her enemy and is now an uneasy ally.

Briony plays his devoted "heartspring" in public. The role takes her into foreign courts, where she listens, collects information and passes it on to a rebellion she supports in secret.

The Hearst family keeps secrets of its own. Toven has a shadowy gift that he has never explained, and Briony cannot tell what it costs or what it might do. His family helped ruin her homeland, and she has to weigh how far she can rely on him.

The book sits in the middle of The Evermore Trilogy, after Rose in Chains, and makes the most sense once that first volume has been read. It is dark romantic fantasy built on enemies-to-lovers tension, magic and court intrigue. Every alliance carries a risk, and the closeness forced on Briony and Toven is the biggest one.