A gate of bone, a forgotten prince, and a destiny that should have stayed locked.

Seventeen-year-old actress Eloise has been told fairy tales her whole life. Every one of them dark, every one of them twisted, and all of them starting at the Dark Gate?a door of bone and silver that sits on her grandmother's estate?a gate that, until recently, had remained shut.

Now both the shadow key that locked the gate along with her grandmother are missing, and things have started sneaking through the night.

They might be beasts, her grandmother used to say, but they are beautiful. Even that story did not prepare Eloise for the night she met one of them and was swept away for an adventure, decades in the making.

Fae guardian Aurek was tasked with checking on the Dark Gate?a border between his world and the human realm?but he never expected to find any trouble?or her.

The gate had been closed for sixty years, but Aurek knows the keeper of the only key would have not given it up willingly. For he had been there the day the door was locked, and he'd paid the price of it.

Together with a girl who seems quite human but a little bit not, he must find a way to close the gate for good and hide her from the prince who keeps secrets of his own.