Received this book as an ARC for an honest review

"I usually prefer silence. I never thought I would find someone whose voice I wanted to hear."

I keep saying with every new book in this series that it is my favorite... So to stick to tradition and the absolute magical wild ride that is Aurelia and Fox's story, this is definitely my favorite.

By now we have met Aurelia in the other books, but she's still a bit of a mystery, as is our favorite grumpy guy Fox.

Aurelia is technically royalty, but she likes her life as it is; she's really gifted with magic and potions and helping her animal friends in need. So when her birthday comes around and she and Beatrix watch the lights in the sky, she's reminded that she always wanted to travel to see more of the continent. So maybe now is the right time.

Fox, who is the captain of the guards for the king and queen of Vernallis, is quiet and mostly keeps to himself. He's a skillful fighter, and despite never talking unless absolutely necessary, he's very vocal in other situations where Aurelia is on the receiving end of the words he so easily whispers to her in the dead of night.

For two years they have been meeting up in secret, until Aurelia decides to travel to Thermia to potentially learn more about her family, only to find Fox not too far behind.

What should be a trip to hopefully meet the mysterious queen turns into far more than they both bargained for when running into old friends and finding themselves in trouble in a part of the continent that isn't too kind to magic, even the kind that Aurelia uses to help others.

The balance of magic, emotion, adventure, spice, and action is so well done that it was near impossible to put this book down.

I always have so many expectations for the beauty that Kate Kind manages to come up with and every time she manages to exceed them phenomenally.