Elise is a princess! But she’s a super dooper nice princess who treats serfs like her very best friends, because they are! It’s come time for this super nice princess, who is the second niece to the king, to do her duty and get married. But who can she marry? How will an amazing super nice princess, who can fight! find a suitable suitor? Why, you hire a marriage negotiator! Enter Legion Grey, negotiator extraordinaire!
Now, he must have amazing experience and knowledge in how to achieve the best match for a princess, right? At least a handful of successful unions to support his being chosen for such an important task? Who knows! His CV literally says, “Legion Grey, Marriage Negotiator, Super Hunky.” He literally does nothing to negotiate, like nothing, just tells Super Dooper Nice Elise that he needs to get to know her because he’s a negotiator! Terrible at his job, I can’t stress this enough, he doesn’t do anything associated with his sole purpose of being there. And it’s like, why the f am I listening to this. I did manage to finish it though, so good for me! Really, there are about five books in purgatory that I just can’t finish.
I digress. So Elise’s suitors suck, frowny face. That Legion, he’s so dreamy, and he likes to get really creepy close to Elise, and she’s really super nice, so obviously they must spend time touching each other instead of, I don’t know, anything else. I think it’s supposed to be romantic, like they’re building some kind of bond, but it’s just disjointed nonsense. I just sighed so much listening to these two talk to each other then completely inappropriately touch each other AT AN EVENT Legion was supposed to help her find a husband. Like complete trash at his job. And she doesn’t have any other thoughts in her head other than Legion is dreamy and being mean is bad! THROUGH THE ENTIRE BOOK.
There’s this blood wraith running around sometimes cutting people up, or something, and he cut off the tips of Elise’s fingers a few years ago, maybe, I don’t know, but she sure talks about those missing finger tips a lot.
And, wouldn’t you know it, Legion is sick around the same time the blood wraith strikes. Craziness, what could that possibly mean? Elise is pretty dim, so she’s all, oh, poor hunky guy, here’s some tea.
Eventually something actually happens, yes, I was as shocked as you. They’re all trying to go to a ball or something for Elise, and the guards start killing people. It’s a coup! Elise’s mean sister and her fiancée are taking this boring book into their own hands. They kill a lot of people, but not Elise’s parents, I don’t think, since they swear fealty to them. They did kill the king and a lot of servants, which is like, ummm, why? They manage to kill Elise’s best friend, Mavie, but her other best friend, Siv, is just a spy sent to kill Elise, but Siv loves Elise because she’s so nice and would never hurt her, so it’s fine.
Elise, Siv, Legion the Non-Negotiator, and his friends run somewhere and Elise is told to take some loyalty oath to Legion, and she’s like absolutely! And I’m like wtf. It’ll give her his strength for the night blah blah. They do some ritual and bam, she’s tied to him for the night. And off they all go to the safety of an Ale House. Good call.
At the Ale House it comes to light that Legion is the Blood Wraith! What?! Craziness! Dim Elise freaks out and demands her fingertips back, no, I’m not kidding, and then she gets all pissy and wants to leave but is warned it’ll hurt her to leave since she did the pinky swear ritual. Probably a partial pinky swear, RIP fingertips. So Elise goes to her room with Siv and leaves from there. I must have missed something, not sure why it was okay for her to leave from her room, but off she goes.
To be quickly captured by her skeezy almost fiancée, Jarl. Jarl’s all, I’m totally gross, so blah blah blah grossness. Before Jarl can put his horrible plan into action, Legion appears and kills someone, which like, that’s good, but he’s spilt blood, so he has to go cuckoo bonkers all night. As the blood wraith he gets all nuts and panty wanting blood so his crew has to hold him down. Elise is all, let him go, you’re hurting him! “YOU’RE HURTING HIM!” she keeps wailing. And it’s like, let him go boys, it’s fine, no one will miss her.
Legion eventually stops panting and confesses he doesn’t even know who he is! He’s under some curse to make him think he’s good at negotiating. And I want to say it’s here that they start blathering on and on about how she needs to choose him, blah blah. Turns out he needs Elise’s royal blood to get into some tomb thing so he’ll be free from the curse of tricking people to think he has any useful skills. We learn that everything he’s done in the book was a setup, he needed to get close to Elise for her blood. He’d heard there was one nice, dumb royal who’s do anything for a hunky negotiator, and ta da. She’s like, of course I will, let’s break your curse! And I’m like WTF, Elise. Dude has been using you this whole time, like, know your worth. But he’s soooo hunky and it was so fun when we played doctor! Yes, I will do anything you want, Legion Grey!
They wander off to the tomb thing and Elise comes across a storyteller fairy girl who writes stories of what will happen and the girl’s all, blah blah and Elise is like blah blah blah! Turns out Elise has to sacrifice herself to break Legion’s curse, so she tries to sacrifice herself, but Legion intervenes and sacrifices himself for himself and then turns into a fairy king. Because of course he does. He has like, black hair now? I think? And pointed ears? And his name is Todd! But everyone calls him Valen the Night Prince. Another Night Prince, okay. And he’s all, I will avenge my family! I’m like a billion years old, rrrrrrahhhh!!!!!! Sure, big guy. And his Scooby pals are also fae people, so that’s nice for them I guess?
Todd then tells Elise thanks for the fun, see you later, and leaves her there. And that’s when I kind of woke up.
All right, this book is terrible, but I’ll try the next one since Todd abandoned Elise in search of vengeance. She’s all, wtf is happening? But I’m so nice and I want to build a bridge between our people because everyone loves me! I’m SO NICE, YOU HAVE TO COME BACK AND TELL ME HOW NICE I AM!
Spoiler, the second book has more stuff that happens, but so far the characters are still about as interesting as chewing on particle board.
