A marriage of convenience is a common practice among the aristocrats of Ecteria, but the wedding of Lady Likmiris Derlinger to a man sentenced to death for a cruel murder must remain a secret from society. Not surprisingly, because no one knows the family’s sweet secret: an ancient curse laid on every woman of the Derlinger line takes the lives of their fiancés.
An excellent solution is to find a condemned man and buy him out from the executioner right from the scaffold—so that the unfortunate victim, without even knowing it, takes the fatal blow of fate upon himself, and only then enter into a new marriage free from the charms of dark magic.
But, unexpectedly, everything goes not according to plan: the newly married husband survives and asserts his rights to his lawful wife. Now young Lady Likmiris will have to leave her parents and go with her husband to an old estate far from the capital. The new home holds many dangers; to stay alive and find love, she must not only defeat the curse, but also uncover the terrible secret behind it.