Scallywag or Scoundrel

Lia’s first clue that something is wrong is the color of his beard.

Not the blue itself—Allysian nobles dye stranger things for fashion—but the way the sea captain watches the princess while seven broken betrothal rings glint on his fingers like barnacles. Seven former fiancées who never quite made it to the altar. Seven names people suddenly can’t recall.

The princess is smitten. Of course she is. He’s brooding, charming in the way a shipwreck is charming, and absolutely hopeless at polite society. By the time he’s stumbled through a bow and muttered something disastrous at a royal ball, she’s planning the wedding.

Lia, the princess’s handmaiden, is planning something else.

Armed with a hairpin, a hidden knife, and a talent for withering looks, she marches into the rowdiest sailor’s tavern in the kingdom to start asking questions no one wants asked. Somewhere between the spilled ale, the suspicious silences, and the smell of salt and old rope, a picture begins to form—and it isn’t pretty.

Dragged into this escalating disaster is Lord Tyrell: noble, kind, and so tongue-tied around the princess he can barely remember his own title. He’s adored her from the edges of ballrooms for years. Now he finds himself dodging fists in dockside alleys, hiding behind curtains at palace soirées, and realizing that the girl with ink on her fingers and a permanent eye-roll might be the one person he can actually talk to.

From glittering court dances to windswept lighthouses where the waves hammer secrets against the rocks, Scallywag or Scoundrel is a Bluebeard fairy tale turned sideways—a romantic caper about loyalty, terrible crushes, and the moment you stop screaming about someone else’s love life and start risking your own.