To save her brother, a magicless librarian must infiltrate a magical academy and trust a Dark Lord, in the first novel in a spellbinding new fantasy duology from the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip.

Thirty-eight-year-old Elodie Kess is content with her quiet life as a librarian in a seaside town, at the furthest reaches of the Kingdom. After all, a scholar of magic with no magical ability is quite useless. Even if she cannot cast spells herself, it brings her endless pride that her brother, Emmerick, not only has a rare talent for magic, but is an esteemed professor at the High Arcanum Conservatory.

But when Emmerick goes missing-along with his closely guarded research-Elodie is the only one who can rescue him.

The head Enchanter of the Conservatory and Elodie hatch a plan to glamour her as a first-year graduate student, so she can infiltrate the institution to find out what happened. Her most likely suspect? The Conservatory's least favorite professor-a centuries-old Dark Lord, now defanged and de-magicked, sentenced to a lifetime cursed as a cat.

When her ability to repel magic accidentally dispels his curse at her touch-unveiling the disarmingly attractive man he once was-he becomes her best ally. Finding herself pulled into the Dark Lord's orbit, he is surprisingly different than her studies suggest. He is brilliant with magic, and thoughtful in surprising ways. As Elodie and the Dark Lord work together, she begins to question everything she's been taught about him, and soon guarding her heart seems impossible. But for every lie in the history books, there is a grain of truth, and the Dark Lord was cursed for a reason . . .