For as long as Cassidy Crowe can remember, there have been girls who belonged to the River.

Legend says a bloody gold rush bewitched its water. Ever since, the River’s been Blessing the girls of Whisper’s Edge with magical powers forged from the sins of the prospectors. 

Ninety-nine years later, two immortal Blessed queens reign supreme: one, whose power imprisons half the land in eternal noon, and the other, in eternal midnight.

Cassidy’s Blessing could kill them both.

Cassidy has always feared her lethal gift: the power to rot anything—even her own flesh—with her touch. Until, on eve of the centennial, Cassidy’s Ma charges her with a single dying wish. She must rot the queens before the end of the century, when they’ll renew the spell keeping Cassidy’s town suspended in misery under a merciless, eternal sun. But Ma must have lost her mind. If the queens die, a deadly curse will reawaken. 

Desperate to break the curse and vanquish the queens, Cassidy sneaks into the midnight city with an impossible plan. There, she meets a devilishly handsome male courtesan, who also happens to be Jameson Lancaster, the night queen’s secret paramour. When Jameson meets the seemingly innocent Cassidy Crowe at an infamous pleasure house, he’s tempted to follow her into the sunlight and taste a world beyond his queen’s midnight wall. 

Soon, a single night’s tryst turns into something more. But Cassidy can’t let herself fall in forbidden love. Because she’s already made a secret, twisted bargain with the curse: to lift it, she must break Jameson’s heart.