INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A sharp-tongued folklorist and her academic rival must solve their mentor's murder in this lush sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic.

Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a mythical spring of untold power.

The king wants to harness the fabled water source from which magic flows to secure his reign, and Lorelei is determined to prove herself. It's a small cost to make her dream come true: to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to faraway lands.

The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader Lorelei's beloved mentor is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship.

The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff.

Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again and a coup begins in earnest.