Her Lovely Champion by Mariah Rae Birch

A disillusioned lady knight and the princess she never meant to rescue…

Imprisoned in a witch’s tower eighteen years ago, Princess Eliza did not expect to still be waiting. Now past the age of thirty, with several alarming silver strands in her hair, the rescue attempts are growing rarer, and her only companions remain several well-loved bookshelves and her own increasingly lonely mind.

Destitute and out of options, Sir Kaylen accepts the king of Alludan’s doomed quest (and reward) to rescue his daughter. What is meant to be her final act to help her family goes all wrong when she arrives at the witch’s tower to discover, not the deadly hydra waiting for her, but something else entirely.

Together, the weathered knight and sheltered princess face a perilous journey back through the monster-ridden outerlands to civilization, where the monsters only become more human. As ill-timed attraction ignites, the lines between them blur.

Eliza and Kaylen each have expectations tearing them apart. They were never supposed to meet. Will the lady knight who accidentally saved the princess get to keep her?