I'm glad to see that Rogers decided to show what happened to Iloria after we saw her in [b:Sabine|10770941|Sabine (And the Beast, #1)|Moira Rogers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302568769s/10770941.jpg|13736656]. At the end of Sabine, we see Farran, the High Lord's first Battle Lord, give Iloria the option of marrying him. The beginning of this book takes place almost immediately after she accepts his offer. Farran has mixed feelings about his impulsive decision to marry Iloria because he fears he might be placing her in danger due to a long standing family curse. The curse is really played up here and honestly, from what we saw, I felt like Farran was almost over-reacting to it. A large part of this is probably because we don't really see the affects of the curse until the very last scene of the book when Iloria accidentally triggers it. At that point its not really about the struggles of the curse but about how they overcome it.... And its overcome in a rather cliched manner.

All in all, this was a good short story, but it didn't hold the same depth or grim atmosphere that I loved in [b:Sabine|10770941|Sabine (And the Beast, #1)|Moira Rogers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302568769s/10770941.jpg|13736656]. While that one verged closer to being a dark fairytale, this one was closer to an erotic one. I'll be interested to see where Rogers takes the rest of this series. ( )