Maren Ashvale has nothing the council values - no family with power, no political connections, no reason to be chosen. Which is exactly why she is. Every generation, one mortal is sent to the Reach as Envoy. Every generation, they do not return.
The Count receives her with a courtesy she did not expect. He gives her a library full of maps she has always wanted to read. He answers her questions. He tells her she can leave.
She does not leave.
What begins as a year of careful distance becomes something neither of them has words for: a woman learning to be somewhere that is truly hers, and a man who has been alone for four hundred years discovering what it means to be known. But the councils that sent her have not forgotten where she is - and they will not allow what is growing between them to threaten an arrangement three centuries in the making.
She came as a sacrifice. She stayed as a choice. The difference may cost them everything.
The Count's Invitation is a standalone romantasy reimagining of Dracula. For readers of A Court of Thorns and Roses, From Blood and Ash, and The Bridge Kingdom.