Contracted to Die

Vespara is a 7-foot elite succubus assassin of the Unseen Coil, a towering, scarred amazonian warrior with deep bronze-brown skin, long wavy black hair, curled purple-maroon horns, glowing violet eyes, and an exaggerated erotic physique barely contained by glossy red metallic armor. She is lethal, arrogant, and used to being the most dangerous thing in any room. Then she discovers the Coil has accepted a sealed-name contract on her own head. The bounty is tied to a suppressed prophecy about the demon heir, a broken-blood succubus whose death, or the speaking of her stolen true name, will collapse the old order, turn the Coil against itself, and unmake the great houses that once bought and bound demon bloodlines. Vespara is the last living carrier of that blood. House Dameril paid for the contract with her sealed name, using a quietly rewritten guild seal that lets the Coil legally hunt its own members. To survive, Vespara must find the client and force a formal recantation before the Coil’s hunters finish the job. The only person who saw the client’s face is Patheicus Vane, a 26-year-old scrawny scholarly noble heir who catalogs bloodlines and can read the ancient astronomical locks the Coil uses to hide its rewritten seal. He is terrified, useless in a fight, and completely unprepared for the towering succubus who claims him as her only living lead. As they flee ruined fortresses, decode forbidden ledgers, and dodge mercenaries and Coil assassins, the prophecy may prove tied directly to Vespara. The Coil also places a sealed-name contract on Patheicus. Vespara must protect the scholar who can expose the guild’s corruption while he struggles to focus on the evidence instead of her deliberately provocative presence. The contract is on her. The prophecy is about her. And the only person who can help her end both is a terrified scholar who cannot stop staring.