The Queen Who Married the Monster

Queen Amara's kingdom is dying. After eight months without rain, the wells of Suryagarh are empty. Children are dying of thirst, grain is failing and neighbouring rulers are waiting for the kingdom to collapse. Then a messenger arrives from the Black Mountains with an offer from the man her people call a monster. King Varun can reopen the mountain springs. He will send water, grain and physicians before sunrise.
His price is Amara. To save her people, Amara agrees to enter the mountain king's hall as his queen and leave it as his wife. She expects a cruel ruler, a cursed palace and a marriage built upon revenge. Instead, she discovers that the history she inherited was carefully rewritten. Varun's people were betrayed by Amara's royal house. Sacred water keepers were mutilated, children were taken and an ancient marriage oath was broken.
Varun was once the boy who survived. Now he carries a living curse that binds his body to the springs and shadows of the mountains. The marriage meant to punish Amara soon becomes a dangerous contest of truth, power and desire. Varun wants justice for the dead. Amara refuses to surrender her crown, her name or her right to choose. Yet the deeper she enters the mountain kingdom, the more she questions who the real monster has always been.
Old enemies gather. Buried records return. The curse strengthens and the water sustaining two kingdoms begins to fail. To save her people and the man she is beginning to love, Amara must confront the crimes of her own bloodline without allowing guilt to become another form of captivity. The Queen Who Married the Monster is a sweeping romantic fantasy about a sovereign queen, a wounded mountain king and a marriage that must become a partnership before inherited hatred destroys them both.
It combines enemies-to-lovers tension, royal intrigue, hidden history, elemental magic and an emotionally earned romance in which love cannot require a woman to surrender herself.