Curse of the Glass Rose

The novel follows Elara Vanya, an archivist driven by longing and anxiety, who uses forbidden magic to confirm the Glass Rose curse: it grants perfect power by consuming human emotion. Aided by historian Lyra, Elara learns her mother, the King's sister, engineered Elara to be the final catalyst. Elara infiltrates the Palace, confronting her ethical conflict and sacrificing her memory to find the curse's core: the Tear Reservoir, fueled by a magical creature's sorrow.
She destroys the reservoir, causing the Palace's structural collapse and chaos. Captured and imprisoned, Elara is met by her uncle, King Alaric, who reveals he has been containing the curse by wearing its influence. To prevent the unstable Rose from consuming Elara's powerful longing, the King sacrifices himself, fusing the Rose into his body and imprinting his will onto Elara. The final magical discharge strips Elara of all emotion, leaving her a terrifying vessel of cold, perfect, absolute logic.
Now possessing the Rose's power and her uncle's will, Elara escapes and uses a public treaty signing as the perfect, tactical moment to destroy the physical Rose. She delivers the ultimate truth, shattering the kingdom's illusion and causing total political chaos. Prince Kaelan is emotionally destroyed. Elara, utterly cold and without longing or anxiety, uses her chilling clarity to seize absolute control, establishing a ruthless, perfect, emotionless regime.
The novel concludes with the dark, surprising realization that the curse was not defeated, but tragically and perfectly inherited, leading to a rule of cold, absolute control.