Throne of Ash and Wanting #957134

Seraphina Voss lost everything when her father was executed for treason he didn't commit. Her title, her home, her family's name — all stripped away by a court that decided she was collateral damage in someone else's game.

Two years later, the empire's spymaster offers her a deal she can't refuse: infiltrate the Hollow Crown Palace, get close to Crown Prince Caelum Drevholt, and retrieve evidence of his conspiracy. In exchange — her father's name restored. Everything she lost, returned.

The job is straightforward. The palace is not.

The prince is careful in ways that make careful people nervous. The court is a performance with no audience. And the conspiracy Seraphina was sent to expose doesn't exist — because the real conspiracy is the one that sent her here, and it's considerably more dangerous than anyone told her.

Worse: Caelum knows what she is. He's known since her third day. And instead of having her removed, he's watching. Waiting. Testing her with every conversation to see what she'll do when the choice between the mission and something else entirely becomes impossible to avoid.

In the hidden passages behind the palace walls, in the library's afternoon light, in the silence of a council chamber where powerful men plot the fall of the one person who saw through her completely — Seraphina will have to choose. The family name she came for, or the man who asked her to stay anyway.

Some choices, it turns out, have a cost that no amount of planning can account for. And some people are worth choosing even when you know exactly what it will cost you.