The Usurper's Bride: A Dark Romance of Ancient Egypt (The Anubis Rite)

By Isaline Ondrake

He took her father's throne. Now he needs her to keep it.

A dark, dual-POV, enemies-to-lovers forced-marriage romance set in the Egypt of the pharaohs.

In the city of Ouaset, a man who takes the throne by murder does not own it yet. When the flood reaches the mark on the nilometer, the dead king's heart is weighed in the House of the Scales before forty thousand people, and one voice decides whether the usurper is crowned or thrown into the pit.

The voice of the murdered king's daughter.

THE GOD IS A PAIR OF SCALES.

THE VERDICT IS MINE.

MERYT

I was behind the screen when the man in the jackal mask opened my father's throat. The next night, I married him, because the throne is the only place in Egypt from which a girl can search for a brother who vanished that same night, out of a room bolted from the inside.

I have my father's gold dagger. I have one hundred and twenty days. And I have a husband who sleeps with his back to the door and has never once lied to me, which is the most dangerous thing anyone has ever done to me.

NAKHT

I planned that murder for four years. Somebody left the sanctuary door open for me that night, and I have been paying for the favor ever since.

I need her voice at the scale. The priests need it more. And when she finally comes to my bed with her father's knife, I am not going to stop her.

Poisoned cups. A countdown the temple can shorten at will. A rival princess with an army. And a verdict that will be spoken, in front of the whole city, by the one woman who has every reason to send him into the pit.

Things to know about The Usurper's Bride:

- Enemies to lovers and forced marriage: he killed her father, and she watched

- Morally gray, possessive usurper king who never once lies to her

- A heroine with a knife, a plan, and a lie she keeps telling herself

- A murder mystery at the heart of a temple conspiracy

- Dual first-person POV, open-door spice

- Ends on a happily-for-now; the story continues in The Anubis Rite

Content warnings: explicit sexual content, the murder of a parent on the page, graphic violence, forced marriage, poisoning, a kidnapped child, and the death of a close friend. Intended for adult readers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HKPNHPQV
• ISBN13: 9798176447927
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"