The Glacial Throne
On the edge of a forty-meter crevasse, cartographer Vera Morrow draws the lines that keep her colony alive, and signs its death warrant without knowing it. Her measurements, copied from a dying surveyor named Dax Orin, encode the location of something the Imperial Conclave has spent decades erasing from every map, every archive, and every memory: the Glacial Throne, a seat of power buried so deep beneath the ice that exposing it could topple an emperor. When Imperial Engineers arrive to raze the colony and everyone in it, Vera is the only one who knows what the maps truly contain. Security Chief Brevin is bought. Colony Administrator Selene Park is arrested. Dr. Yuki Tanaka is sealed into cryo with the only surviving evidence, and Lady Kestrel Vance, Vera's supposed ally, arrives with soldiers at her back. Even Vera's brother Jonas, the family's last hope, is taken hostage in a trap designed by High Auditor Caius Venn himself. As the ice around the colony fractures and the Throne begins to wake, Vera must lead a handful of Ironwake survivors, an imprisoned auditor, and a dead emperor's secrets into the heart of a glacier that has swallowed everyone who ever tried to reach it. The maps are correct. The cost of finishing them is her family, her colony, and the only home she has ever known.