Harper, a teenage girl with
Cerebral Palsy living in
Washington D.C., is accidentally transported to the kingdom of Emberfall while trying to stop a kidnapping. Once there, she meets Prince Rhen and Commander Grey of the Royal Guard at the abandoned Ironrose Castle. The castle is trapped in time, repeating the autumn season of Rhen's eighteenth year until he can find a girl to fall in love with. At the end of the season, Rhen turns into a bloodthirsty monster and rampages until the loop resets again. Though the season has repeated hundreds of times, outside of Ironrose only five years have passed. Lilith, the enchantress who cursed Rhen, has declared that this will be the last season and his final chance at breaking the curse. With the royal family dead, murdered by Rhen after he transformed during the first season, and Rhen sequestered in his castle to keep his people safe, Emberfall is essentially rulerless and vulnerable to foreign invaders. Karis Luran, the Queen of Syhl Shallow has been encroaching on Emberfall's borders, sending soldiers to seize land and say they are doing so for the crown. With Emberfall's army dissolved due to the absence of a monarch's involvement in the kingdom's affairs, Rhen partners with Harper to claim that she is the princess of a distant kingdom called Disi. They bluff an alliance that will grant Emberfall Disi's fictitious troops to scare Karis Luran into backing down. As the season progresses, feelings bud between Rhen and Harper, but the kingdom's situation is too dire for things to develop further. Throughout the season, Lilith makes appearances to torture Rhen with her magic. Harper tries to stop her and is shown a vision of her family back in D.C. Jake, her older brother, is given one more day to pay off the
loan shark their family is indebted to, and their mother is near death from cancer. Harper begs to be allowed to return home, and Lilith grants Grey the power to travel between worlds at will rather than only at the start and end of the season. Rhen agrees to let her go, knowing that if Harper leaves, she will take any chance of breaking the curse with her. Harper makes Grey promise to return to D.C. for her in one day so she can go back to Emberfall and try to fix things before it is too late. Harper pays off the loan shark with jewels from Rhen and is there for her mother's death. Jake doesn't believe her story about Grey and Emberfall, especially when Grey fails to come back for her. She tries to adjust back to her old life. While having dinner with Jake and his boyfriend Noah, a
resident doctor at a hospital, Grey shows up at the door gravely injured. Noah patches him back up, but the loan shark returns, demanding to know where Jake got the jewels from. Before a fight can break out, Grey transports them all to Emberfall. Emberfall is under attack. Karis Luran has her soldiers marching on Ironrose Castle and people are unable to evacuate due to attacks from Rhen, who has turned into a winged monster. Harper comes up with a plan to get Rhen's people out, and in the process, finds out that even in his monster form he recognizes and listens to her. She leads a march against Syhl Shallow's overwhelming forces, using the monster to drive them back over the mountains. Lilith returns, ready to run a sword through monster Rhen, but Harper takes the strike for him. Grey steps in and transports Lilith to the real world where he will be able to kill her. Rhen's curse is broken, but it is unclear if this is due to Harper's act of love or if it happened because Lilith was killed. Grey doesn't return, and without him to take Harper, Jake, and Noah home, they are stuck in Emberfall helping to rebuild the kingdom. It is assumed that Grey is dead, but he fled after Lilith revealed to him that he is the true heir to Emberfall, and the product of an affair the king had with an enchantress before Rhen was born. == Characters ==