Cara Monroe-Woods agreed to attend Silverbrook University for one reason only: respect her father’s last wish. Her priorities are straight: a cushy dorm, some studying, minimal responsibilities and enough time for pilates and coffee breaks. So when a foul-mouthed squirrel starts following her across campus insisting she’s the missing heir to an alien kingdom, Cara does the sensible thing and assumes she’s losing her mind, because honestly, who wouldn’t?

The hallucination theory falls apart when a dark creature attacks her in the university library. The squirrel is telling the truth: Cara is Celestia, heir to a kingdom on a distant planet waiting for her return. The problem? Cara has zero intention of leaving Earth for a place stuck under a magical veil that she doesn’t even remember. Her plan is simple: avoid the bigger problem, master just enough magic skills to not get killed and definitely don’t fall for Black, the broody post-doctoral researcher who keeps showing up exactly when she needs him, and is infuriatingly difficult to figure out.

Spoiler alert: things don’t go as planned. Somewhere between the magic lessons and the friends she wasn’t supposed to make, Silverbrook stopped feeling temporary. When the person she trusted most turns out to be the greatest threat of all, Cara has to make a choice: stay in her comfortable Earth life, or go to the kingdom that’s been waiting for her return.