A brutal Fae bargain.

A cursed soul-tether.

Only one human defenseman stands between love and annihilation.

College hockey star Leo Chen has one rule: protect his zone, protect his people, and never let anyone close enough to hurt him. That shatters the night he's marked as a rare Scar-Seer-someone who can read trauma written on skin-and bound, against his will, to Silas, a deadly Frost Court prince whose scars are a ledger of every life he's taken.

The tether between them is designed to drain Leo's life and feed a dying Fae realm. Breaking it means war. Obeying it means Leo is dead in weeks.

Silas was raised to be his father's perfect blade: efficient, obedient, merciless. But Leo's stubborn fire and ruthless compassion crack two centuries of conditioning. When the extraction magic starts killing Leo faster than anyone predicted, Silas must choose between crown and conscience, Court and human, duty and the boy who should be his enemy.

As Ember and Frost Courts collide over a failing source of power, Leo and Silas race to uncover forbidden, older magic-rituals that demand impossible trust and terrifying intimacy. To save both realms, Leo will have to push his scar-sight to its highest cost, and Silas will have to surrender everything he is...including the right to die for his mistakes.

Bound on every level-body, magic, and slowly, unwillingly, heart-two enemies must become true partners on and off the ice. If they fail, the Courts burn. If they succeed, Leo may never be human-normal again...and he might not want to be.