A Cartographer's Hollow Crown

Three years after her father's pyre, Maren Ashvale still traces his final map by candlelight, certain the old cartographer encoded a truth he died to protect. The vellum is wrong. The stars marked upon it do not match the sky, and the kingdoms they name have been erased from every atlas for a century. When a dying stranger staggers into her workshop and whispers that the map charts a passage to a hollow realm beyond the Bone King's crown, Maren understands at last why her father refused to finish it. The map is not a record. It is a key, and finishing it will open a door that cannot be closed again. Reluctantly she seeks aid, from Lord Theron Ashvale, the stern uncle who guards the family name; from Thessaly Vorn, a scribe whose loyalty is bought in secrets; and from Kael Duskbane, a swordsman exiled from Queen Lyssara Valcourt's court for a crime he will not name. Maeve Calloway, an old friend turned court physician, warns her of the cost. But the queen's envoys, including the watchful Prince Caelen Vraye and the ruthless Lady Bria Selwyn, are hunting the map for their own reasons. So is Valdris Thorne, whose scarred hands suggest he has already crossed the threshold once and returned changed. As the hollow stars begin to darken above the kingdom one by one, Maren faces a choice only a cartographer's daughter can make: complete the map and risk awakening the Bone King, or burn it and let her father's silence win forever.