The Serpent King's Unwanted Bride

"They told her the deep was full of monsters. They forgot to warn her about the king who ruled them."

Raised in a humble river village, Nayara Dev was content with muddy boats, mended fishing nets, and the strange, quiet hum of water in her veins. But when an ancient emblem is discovered around her neck, she is dragged from the silt straight into the viper’s nest of the Vasrayan court. The truth is more terrifying than any fairy tale: she is the kingdom’s abandoned firstborn princess, cast out as an infant and marked by an ancient prophecy. Her return seals a three-century-old debt. From the lightless trenches beneath the sacred Nirva River emerges the immortal Serpent King. Sareth Veyr is cold, ruthless, and feared across the continent as a heart-devouring nightmare of the abyss. The court expects him to claim the pampered, golden second princess. Instead, his incandescent golden eyes lock onto the girl with dirt on her hands and fire in her spine. “Finally.” Sareth doesn't want an obedient royal ornament, he wants Nayara. But Nayara refuses to be traded like palace silk. She won't bow to an immortal tyrant, she refuses to belong to anyone, and she certainly won't surrender to a king who looks at her like she’s the only star in his sky. When poisoned cups and murderous court betrayals push her to the brink of death, Sareth shatters the palace gates and sweeps her into the submerged wonders of Naga-Lokh. Beneath the waves lies a breathtaking civilization of glowing crystal spires, and a truth that shatters everything she knows. Sareth didn't arrive to claim a stranger. He has spent nineteen winters watching over her from the shadows. With a primordial darkness waking in the bedrock and a corrupt surface court baying for blood, Nayara must step into a power older than the earth itself. But in a war between two worlds, the most dangerous threat isn't the ancient monster sleeping below, it’s the terrifying king who would burn kingdoms to ash just to keep her alive.