Stone dust and the bitter tang of a broken seal still coat her tongue when Serenian opens her eyes to a world that has forgotten her name. Three hundred years ago she was the princess of Elbern, the sacrifice that locked the demon king away and saved a continent that never mourned her. Now she wakes alone in an unfamiliar north, the kingdom she died for buried under centuries of silence, her crown reduced to dust no one remembers how to sweep away. She chooses a new name — Serena — and a new shape: a commoner who will never again carry the weight of royalty on her shoulders.

The Valois estate is a place the locals cross themselves over, a fortress whispered to chew up servants and spit out bones. Serena applies anyway, because frightened nobodies do not attract questions, and scrubbing floors is simpler than explaining resurrection. Inside the forbidding walls she finds Yubel, a girl whose sharp tongue hides a loyalty fierce enough to bruise, and Kairos, the Duke of Valois, whose battlefield butchery earned him a title colder than the northern wind. He looks at her as though he can see the ancient magic tangled in her heartbeat. She looks back as though a haunted castle is just another cage — and she has already broken out of one sealed with a demon. What she has not figured out yet is whether trading a throne for a mop means she escaped sacrifice, or simply delayed it.

Also known as: The Maid of The Duchy, 공작성의 하녀님.