The Cogwheel Hearth
Rain hammers the rutted lanes of Lower Tarrowmill as Wren Ashworth staggers up the last rise with a brass key pressed so hard into her palm it has drawn blood. She has inherited a Hearth System, a sprawling cogwheel hearth that warms the town's crooked houses, but the inheritance was no gift. The Guild Council already claims the deed is fraudulent, Inspector Quill Hardcastle is sniffing around the mill with a notebook full of inconvenient questions, and the previous owner, her great-aunt Hester, has vanished without a word. Wren knows only two things: the Hearth System is failing, and the smoke has begun carrying something other than woodsmoke. With Ma Peg whispering warnings from the kitchen, a nest of Pip-mice stealing letters from the post, and a battered mechanical Cogsby wheezing in the cellar, Wren must repair the hearth before the Guild Auditors arrive to seal it shut for good. But every cog she turns seems to loosen another secret, about Sir Percival's ledgers, about the fae-touched foreman Bramble Thornfoot, about why Grimm Blackthorpe will do anything to see the hearth go cold. The truth sits somewhere in the ash beneath the hearthstones, and Wren will have to choose whether to rake it up, or let it stay buried and keep her family whole.