No Curse, No Crown

Agnes Greywater removes curses for a living. Love knots, family ghosts, small hereditary embarrassments — she's seen them all, and she's written a very tidy ledger about every one. Then a cat knocks a crown onto her head, and her ledger becomes an international incident. The crown belongs to Thornhollow, which has been without a king for forty years. The regent shows up to arrest her. The rightful king shows up to claim it. They are the same man, and three days earlier Agnes removed his curse, which has left him kind, honest, and impossible to shake. To stop a war between two kingdoms that both consider her a criminal, she agrees to hold the crown in trust until the fairies who forged it can be consulted. The fairies take six weeks. In six weeks Agnes will write a constitution, run a harvest festival, break a curse of her own, and discover that destiny is much less interesting than an arrangement.