The first person to attack the King of Incendar in this book is on his side. Asher drops out of a freezing night onto Ky’s veranda with a dagger, loses the fight, and admits he was sent by Princess Jory to remind the king what is at stake. It is a test, a flirtation and a cry for help in one move, and Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer spends the rest of its length unpacking what each of the three people in that room actually wanted from it.

Captive Traitor King Plot Summary

A week after the betrayal that closed the first book, Ky has brought Jory, his betrothed, and Asher, her oldest friend and a former Hunter, to his capital, Lastalorre. For the first time in years it is raining, and nobody can say why. Jory wants her brother Dane dead and her own claim to Astranza secured; Ky refuses to move until his border reports are in. Then his captain returns with word of a Draeg prisoner who froze six sentries to death, something that should be impossible in a country without magic. While Jory works with a prickly scholar on the magic she has never managed to summon, Asher is folded into the king’s First Regiment, and enemies start appearing much closer to home.

How Captive Traitor King Works

Chapters rotate between three first-person narrators in the present tense, each titled by role rather than name: the Warrior, the Princess and the Assassin. Ky’s sections are clipped and burdened, full of patrols and grain counts. Jory’s are earnest and analytical. Asher’s are profane, funny and hypervigilant. The headings matter because the novel keeps testing them, asking whether a man trained to kill is only an assassin, or a princess only a bargaining piece.

The romance is an MMF triad in which all three pairings matter. Kemmerer builds it slowly and on terms: Ky refuses to let anything happen while Asher is frightened of him, and that principle shapes every intimate scene that follows.

The world stays simple enough to carry all this. Magic belongs to royal bloodlines and is cast by sketching sigils in the air: fire for Ky’s family, weather for Jory’s father, whose power is fading. Incendar is mountainous, poor and parched after years of drought, while Astranza hides indentured bondage behind its green fields. Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer uses that contrast well, since each heir has to admit that their own kingdom is not the innocent one.

What Captive Traitor King Is Really Building

Underneath the court intrigue, the engine is fear and the habits it breeds. Each of the three has a reflex for danger: Jory plots, Asher reaches for control through seduction, and Ky retreats into patrols, rations and drill schedules. Kemmerer mirrors those reflexes deliberately, so that one character names another’s evasion and later has it named back to them. That mirroring gives the romance a shape beyond desire, and the best scenes are the ones where someone stops running and stays.

Jory gets the most growth. She arrives treating soldiers as spies and strategy as something men do behind closed doors, and by the final third she is reading a map, choosing her own counsel and holding a room. The long-awaited question of her magic gets an answer too, and it is a clever one that ties back into the politics rather than simply making her more powerful.

What works

• Three voices that never blur. You could cover the chapter titles and still know who is talking within a line.
• Consent written with real care. The handling of Asher’s abuse, from his nightmare to the way he freezes when someone touches his face, is specific and never decorative, and his slow recovery of good touch is the emotional spine of Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer.
• The soldiers. Roman the tactician, scarred Toller, bickering Callum and Garrett, and a silent hand-signal language the reader learns alongside Asher make the barracks the most enjoyable place in the book.
• The training drill. A routine exercise that turns lethal halfway through is the best-staged action sequence Kemmerer has written for adults.

Where It Gives Ground

• The middle idles. Several chapters cover one long evening of intimacy and emotional processing, and the war almost vanishes.
• The same interruption, repeatedly. A knock at the door calls Ky away so often that it becomes a running device.
• Revelations in one sitting. Answers about Jory’s family, the drought and Asher’s past arrive in a single conversation late on, and one of them is foreshadowed heavily enough to guess early.
• A cliff, not an ending. Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer stops mid-crisis, with almost nothing about the war settled.

Do You Need Warrior Princess Assassin First?

Yes. This picks up a week after book one with no recap to speak of, and the emotional weight of Asher’s stripes, Dane’s cruelty and the trio’s one night together depends on it. Kemmerer drops in reminders, but they assume you were there. The Braided Fate reading order:

1. Warrior Princess Assassin (2025)
2. Captive Traitor King (2026)
3. A third, untitled book to finish the trilogy

Read These Next

If Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer left you wanting more royal bargains with real heat:

1. The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen, another princess sent into a marriage as a weapon who changes her mind about the enemy king.
2. The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, for a heroine surviving a court that wants her dead.
3. Powerless by Lauren Roberts, for magic that depends on who you are standing next to.
4. A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer, her young adult take on a cursed prince and a kingdom in peril.

About Brigid Kemmerer

Kemmerer spent more than a decade writing for teenagers before turning to adult romantasy with the Braided Fate trilogy. Her acknowledgments call this her twentieth novel.

• Born in Omaha in 1978, she now lives in the Baltimore area.
• She debuted with the Elemental series, beginning with Storm in 2012.
• A Curse So Dark and Lonely (2019), a Beauty and the Beast retelling that opened the Cursebreakers series, became a New York Times bestseller.
• Book one of this trilogy came out from Avon in August 2025; Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer followed on 3 November 2026.

The Verdict

Captive Traitor King by Brigid Kemmerer is a middle book that knows its real subject is three wounded people learning to trust each other, and on that front it is tender, sexy and smart. The war it keeps promising gets less attention than it deserves, and the final chapters rush through their secrets before slamming a door on the reader. Read it for Asher, stay for the soldiers, and keep an eye out for news of book three, because this cliff is a long drop.

Content notes tap to reveal

Recalled sexual abuse and enslavement of a teenager, including a detailed nightmare.Physical abuse by a sibling, remembered.Torture by fire, on the page and in flashback.Battlefield violence, a severed hand, bodies displayed on pikes.Panic attacks and post-traumatic stress.Abduction, captivity and drugging.Heat level: high. Several explicit, open-door scenes in M/F, M/M and three-way combinations, plus strong language throughout.

Where to read Captive Traitor King

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