Bought at the Winter Ball

Wren Calloway has ninety days to save her brother's life, and one asset to sell: herself. At the Winter Ball, labor contracts go to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder is Commander Sath ov-Darrian — forty-nine, Vashandi, terrifying, and richer than most planets. He doesn't want a bedwarmer. He wants a translator with a genetic marker only one human in ten thousand carries, and Wren has it. Their bargain is professional. Their first fight is about poetry. By the third month she's wearing his clan's bondrite and neither of them will say the word marriage out loud. Then the rival clan demands her as a spy, and Sath hands her over on the council floor in front of every lord in the ring. What he does next costs him his rank, his fleet, and his name. What she does next makes them both rich enough to buy the war.