This is a super cute prince-and-warrior queer romance fantasy that feels like it was also written by an economics nerd. Prince Kadou, extremely insecure and given to panic attacks, gets into hot water and his sister the queen must exile him from court. Evemer, one of the royal family’s scholar-bodyguards, reluctantly accepts the duty of guarding the flighty prince, and they find themselves investigating a mystery involving political scheming and counterfeit currency. The currency bit is particularly relevant because Kadou, like certain others in the kingdom, has the ability to tell the purity of a metal by touch, a fact integral to guaranteeing the trustworthiness of his country’s currency (and which makes the issue of counterfeits particularly fraught). I liked the romance, but I loved the worldbuilding.