
Short answer: You can read The Crownless Prince at any point–first, last, in the middle. For the main series, I recommend starting with A Thieving Curse, then either A Lonely Dance or A Fated Quest. Book four, A Stolen Heart (releases in 2024), should only be read after A Fated Quest.
Technically, A Thieving Curse (Book 1), A Lonely Dance (Book 2), A Fated Quest (Book 3), and related novella The Crownless Prince (part of the Once Upon a Prince multi-author series) all work more or less as standalones. However, the only true standalones are Curse and Crownless…and they tie into the other books.
A Lonely Dance and A Fated Quest both contain major spoilers for A Thieving Curse. If you don’t want to be spoiled and/or you want to go into books two and three with a full appreciation for character arcs that are set up in book one, read A Thieving Curse first. If you don’t mind spoilers and aren’t interested in Beauty and the Beast retellings, you can jump right into Dance or Quest.
The Dragon Prince’s Heart: An A Thieving Curse Novella retells the beginning of A Thieving Curse from the male love interest’s point-of-view. It definitely works best after A Thieving Curse.
The Crownless Prince (releases Dec 1, 2023) is set 200 years in the past compared to The Miraveld Chronicles. However, some events and characters in Crownless are vaguely referenced in A Fated Quest. In some ways, the two are different sides of the same coin, but you can read either first, so you can read Crownless at any point. (If you really despise all spoilers, you may want to read Crownless before Quest. But any “spoilers” in Quest are things either in the blurb or guessable for Crownless [like, shockingly, that the couple…are a couple 😆].)
A Lonely Dance and A Fated Quest happen concurrently with different characters in different kingdoms. Reading order for these two does not matter.
A Stolen Heart (Book 4 – coming in 2024) will be the least standalone-ish. Although the main character changes, it is a direct sequel to A Fated Quest. Heart‘s book description contains spoilers for A Fated Quest.
Makes sense? Here’s a chart to maybe help! (Absent from chart: The Dragon Prince’s Heart, which should be read after A Thieving Curse.)

More in-depth:
A Thieving Curse: non-sexual & non-descriptive nudity as a consequence of the male love interest shape shifting, a couple of passionate kisses, a character is asked if she “shared [a male character’s] bed” (no), non-consensual kisses (fairly brief, non-graphic, not condoned), characters about to be married imply looking forward to retiring to bed, married characters head toward their bedroom with some flirtatious but non-graphic banter.
A Lonely Dance: kisses, villain forcefully kisses FMC a couple times (non-graphic), just-married couple flirtatiously & briefly talk about wanting to leave their party to retire to their room.
A Fated Quest: one kiss and a couple almosts, FMC recalls someone attempting to kiss her without consent, reference to off-page male villains philandering and using their power to force women, married couple briefly flirt with implied sexual subtext.
The Crownless Prince: non-explicit references to marriage consummation related to the plot, MCs implicitly/vaguely briefly discuss wanting to have sex after they get married, kisses, fade-to-black scene (fades out before clothes are removed), non-descriptive mention of MCs getting out of bed and putting their clothing back on.
Take me back to:
The list of Miraveld books
A Thieving Curse
The Dragon Prince’s Heart
A Lonely Dance
A Fated Quest
A Stolen Heart