The Contracted Grand Duchess

Princess Rien Digrit has spent her life shackled to a merciless curse: every man she marries dies on their wedding night. Yet it is not the curse that finally destroys her, but betrayal—on the occasion of her sixth marriage, she is murdered. Against all odds, death is not the end. Rien reawakens on the day of her fifth husband's funeral, with her ill-fated sixth marriage looming once more before her. This time, she refuses to walk down the aisle as a doomed bride. Consumed by a single, burning desire for revenge, Rien seeks out the ruthless Grand Duke Clocean Ellagadar—a man formidable enough to serve her purposes—and agrees to enter into a marriage pact with him. But the agreement soon begins to shift beneath her feet. Clocean quietly alters and erases the contract's terms, even insisting that Rien forget it ever existed. As his actions grow increasingly strange, she cannot help but question whether he has misunderstood their arrangement entirely—or whether this marriage of convenience is quietly becoming something far deeper than either of them ever signed up for.