What would make the most ruthless ice-queen assassin in the Kingdom hesitate?

Bound to the Kingdom for life, Cie serves a cruel King, her knives pledged to his word, her life at his mercy. She is also one of the Kingdom’s most privileged slaves – one of the Praetoria: five of the best, sworn to protect the Prince and, one day, to rule at his side. It’s not a bad life – luxurious parties in any of the eighteen worlds, beautiful women falling over themselves to land in her bed, her orders to be obeyed by over forty-eight billion citizens.

But when a routine job goes spectacularly wrong, Cie discovers there is a witness to her failure – a witness to a political assassination the King would never want revealed. It’s Cie’s intense misfortune that the witness is a beauty – a woman with sweet, warm skin that Cie longs to sink into, with deep, brown eyes that hold promises that Cie has only ever dreamt of, a woman whose embrace offers a gentleness and a kindness Cie craves above all else.

Jemma thought she’d been in love before, but when she falls for the King’s assassin, she falls hard. Cie burns her up – the assassin plays fast and loves harder, and Jemma’s head is whirling even as her body is thrilled. Jemma watches as a growing terrorist threat pushes the King to madness and Cie’s orders become more and more violent. The woman she thinks she loves is steeped in red. Is it even possible for a girl from the suburbs to love a person so drenched in blood?