Emperor Jahn has finally decided to take a bride and sent a call to six women who he feels would do best at his wife. But he would really rather not marry at all- he doesn't want to marry a woman who marries him only for the power and prestige of being Empress. He wants love, and knows that he's unlikely to get it from his marriage.
Morgana Ramsden is a frightened woman. Long ago, when her mother died, she exhorted Morgana to marry only for love, and Morgana agreed, while holding out herself for a love she could believe in. Her stepfather agreed to not force her into a marriage she didn't want, but now she's 25, and she still hasn't found a man she wants to marry, or that she loves.
But her fear comes from quite a different secret. One night, she sneaked out of the house to attend a fireside dance and country festival when one of the men in town tried to rape her. She screamed in fear and anger, and something happened- the man Tomas Glyn, turned into crystal, as did much of the grass around them. When she touched the grass, it shattered, and she fled in fear, knowing herself to be a murderer. But now that it's happened once, she's afraid that it will happen again, and tries to live a safe constricted life so that her emotions can never be roiled to that point again.
Jahn, wanting to get out of the palace, has gone in disguise to retrieve Morgana along with one of his sentinels, Blaine. But when he requests that Morgana go with him to the palace, she turns down the Emperor's offer, saying that he's fat, stupid and cowardly. This enrages her stepfather, and as the Sentinels leave, he blasts Morgana with his tongue, taking back his promise to her dead mother and swearing he will give her hand in marriage to the next man to enter the room.
Which is when Jahn pops in and tells her stepfather that he will take him up on that offer. Morgana's stepfather sends her away, and Jahn reveals who he is and gets her stepfather's permission to take her away and teach her a lesson. All too soon, Morgana is married to Jahn and she and the two Sentinels are heading for the capital city.
But despite expecting to hate her new husband, she doesn't. He tells her he'll put off bedding her until they reach the Capital, and promises her on his honor that he didn't marry her for her stepfather's money or lands. She does expect her stepfather to regret his actions and come to rescue her, but when she reaches the capital with no sign of her stepfather, she wholeheartedly throws herself into her new life, which includes being a true wife to Jahn.
Soon, they are in a full relationship, including making love. Jahn knows he must soon tell her the truth, but he is afraid that she will hate him for lying to her and so he continues on as he has been. But when he seeks to protect her by moving her into the palace from the tavern where she has been living, he will be exposing himself to her finding out who he really is, and her to an evil man who seeks the death and overthrow of the man she has come to love, a man who is more closely related to her than she can ever know. But is she up to the task of facing and controlling her magic?
Meanwhile, Danya, another of the brides commanded to the Palace at the whim of Jahn, must also deal with the evil mage, who claims to have the child she thought dead in hostage to her cooperation with his evil plan. The only man she can turn to is the Emperor's chief mage, who has noticed how much strain she is under. But can she find a way to escape his magical grip?
Another wonderful book from Linda Winstead Jones. In this one, not only does Jahn finally find his empress, but we find out who has been attempting to sabotage his search for a bride and why, and we also get to see how the plot to take over the throne falls to a person much more evil than the original conspirator.
This wraps up the plotlines from the previous books, and even though each book covers two romances, and each does end happily, neither story feels forced or neglected. It was nice to see how Emperor Jahn is revealed to Morgana, and her easy rapport with people despite her priviledged and spoiled upbringing.
There was one thing that annoyed me: that Morgana is thought spoiled by both Jahn and her stepfather. I didn't think of her as spoiled at all, and after all their time together, Jahn never admits that she was never spoiled. I would have liked to see some mention of that fact. Someone who was spoiled would not have taken well to the life of hardship and deprivation that she faced as the bride of the supposed "Sentinel Jahn". But I suppose that's just me.
In the end, the sex is hot, the relationships believable, and the villains suitably villainous- enough so that they inspire at least a shiver near the end, when it seems that he might get his way after all. But the ending brings together all the disparate storylines from this book and the first two, and brings them all together for a bang-up ending to not only the book, but the series as a whole. Highly recommended.
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