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Reading Order - Royal Elite
Rina Kent
💕 Aiden & Elsa (main saga) + 5 Royal Elite couples
At Royal Elite International School, the British elite doesn't just rule: they destroy. Aiden King — dark, calculating heir — sets his sights on Elsa Steel, daughter of his father's sworn enemy. What starts as revenge twists into obsession, pulling the entire circle of "Elites" into a game where the line between love and cruelty blurs into something no one can define.
Reading style · Publication order
In the order they were originally published.
Editor's note: Royal Elite reads best in publication order. Cruel King (#0) is a prequel that works well either as an extra novel after Deviant King or as your entry point — no major spoilers either way. The Aiden and Elsa trilogy (books 1-3) must be read back to back: it's one continuous story with cliffhangers. Books 4-6 are interconnected standalones featuring different couples from the same Royal Elite circle. The Epilogue (#7) closes out all five couples and is meant to be read last.
Reading order
#0Cruel King
Rina Kent
★★★★4/5
💕 Levi King & Astrid Clifford
Royal Elite prequel. Levi King — football captain and heir to one of England's most powerful families — crosses paths with Astrid Clifford, a girl who only wants to stay invisible at Royal Elite International School. When Levi leaves her alone at a party after she's been drugged, Astrid is hit by a car and marked forever. He doesn't remember everything that happened that night. She can't forget it. What begins as cruel obsession turns into a game where no one knows who will hunt the other first.
✓ Can be read as a standalone
⚠ Content warnings
Bully romance, drugs, stalking, violence, manipulation, trauma from an accident, school bullying, explicit sexual content.
#1Deviant King
Rina Kent
★★★★4/5
💕 Aiden King & Elsa Steel
Elsa Steel's life is simple until her father's empire collides with the Kings'. Aiden King — dark, calculating heir and absolute ruler of Royal Elite International School — delivers his sentence from their first encounter: "I'm going to destroy you." Everything about him is black: mind, heart, soul. Elsa should have stayed quiet and waited to graduate, but she made the mistake of challenging the king on his throne. Being hated by Aiden is dangerous. Being wanted by him is lethal.
⚠ Content warnings
Bully romance, dark romance, manipulation, violence, stalking, explicit sexual content, cliffhanger ending.
#2Steel Princess
Rina Kent
★★★3.5/5
💕 Aiden King & Elsa Steel
Direct continuation of Deviant King. Aiden promised to destroy Elsa, and he delivered. But the princess isn't about to sink alone: if she lost the battle, the war has only just begun. They say dethroning a king takes a single move, but Elsa will discover the fall can drag her down with him. Aiden has only one rule: his rules, or none at all. The problem is Elsa no longer plays on anyone else's terms.
⚠ Content warnings
Dark romance, violence, manipulation, trauma, explicit sexual content, sensitive themes tied to Elsa's past, cliffhanger.
#3Twisted Kingdom
Rina Kent
★★★★★5/5
💕 Aiden King & Elsa Steel
The closing chapter of Aiden and Elsa's trilogy. The kingdom shouldn't fall. The truth shouldn't destroy it. But everything Elsa thought she knew about Aiden, about her own family, about the night that changed everything, starts to crumble. The secrets that bound them begin pulling them apart, and the enemies they thought they'd defeated were waiting for exactly this moment. In this finale, Aiden and Elsa will have to decide whether they can save each other, or whether the kingdom they built together is meant to burn.
⚠ Content warnings
Dark romance, violence, trauma, manipulation, intense revelations, explicit sexual content, sensitive themes.
#4Black Knight
Rina Kent
★★★★4.5/5
💕 Xander Knight & Kimberly Reed
Love is impossible. Hate is an open game. Xander Knight was once Kimberly Reed's best friend; today he's her worst enemy. Heartbreakingly beautiful, ridiculously popular and brutally cruel, Xander is a knight who won't save anyone. Kimberly is pathetically fake, painfully innocent and secretly dark. What started as a dream turned into a nightmare, and neither one can remember anymore who hunted whom first. She can hide, but never from him.
✓ Can be read as a standalone
⚠ Content warnings
Dark romance, friends to enemies, manipulation, trauma, explicit sexual content, bullying.
#5Vicious Prince
Rina Kent
★★★★4.5/5
💕 Ronan Astor & Teal Van Doren
He's a charming prince, just not hers. Teal has a secret: she stole a heart. Or rather, a marriage contract that was never hers to take or even consider. But it was there, and she grabbed it. A massive mistake. Ronan Astor is aristocracy in this world: an arrogant womanizer, a heartless bastard, a wicked prince. And now he's ready to destroy her. What he doesn't know is that Teal plans to destroy him too. An arranged marriage neither of them asked for, two people who hate each other in public and crave each other in silence.
✓ Can be read as a standalone
⚠ Content warnings
Dark romance, forced marriage, manipulation, explicit sexual content, trauma, sensitive themes.
#6Ruthless Empire
Rina Kent
★★★★★5/5
💕 Cole Nash & Silver Queens
She's off limits. He has none. Silver Queens is the perfect girlfriend: elegant, sharp, the golden girl of Royal Elite. Cole Nash is the ruthless heir to an empire, an obsessive who won't take "no" for an answer. Silver is engaged to his cousin, but that won't stop Cole. What begins as a power play between two calculating minds escalates into a battle where neither is willing to be dethroned. Because in this empire, love isn't an emotion: it's a war strategy.
✓ Can be read as a standalone
⚠ Content warnings
Dark romance, obsession, manipulation, jealousy, explicit sexual content, mental health themes.
#7Royal Elite Epilogue
Rina Kent
★★★★4/5
💕 The 5 Royal Elite couples
One last game. Every Royal Elite couple — Levi and Astrid, Aiden and Elsa, Xander and Kimberly, Ronan and Teal, Cole and Silver — comes back together to close out this world where they started as enemies and ended as inevitable. An extended epilogue that reads like a love letter to the fans: a glimpse into their lives after school, the aftermath of everything they survived, and what "forever" looks like when you were born into England's most dangerous elite.
⚠ Content warnings
Explicit sexual content, references to events from previous books, sensitive themes tied to earlier plots.
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