In this queer folkloric romance from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Dark and Drowning Tide, set in that same world, a world-weary botanist must untangle three mysteries before his time runs out—a plagued grove, a dying dryad prince, and the curse slowly eating his body alive.

In the wake of a disastrous scientific expedition, life has gone on for all the surviving members—save for one. Ludwig von Meyer, renowned botanist and victim of a deadly curse, is slowly turning into a tree.

His body grows more alien by the day, and then there’s the matter of the blackouts, which have him waking inside an eerie, blighted grove.

Then, one night, he awakes on the doorstep of the grove’s keeper, a mysterious dryad prince named Alois, who offers a pact. Alois can lift Ludwig’s curse, on one condition: Ludwig must rid the sacred grove of its blight.

With the bargain sealed, Ludwig has only a handful of weeks to solve the mystery of the grove before his curse makes him a permanent part of it . . . and before the handsome dryad who increasingly owns Ludwig’s heart perishes along with his trees.