The Frost-Pact Inheritance
Maren Halloway stands on the wet threshold of Halloway Trading House for the first time in seven years, a letter from the banker's guild burning in her coat pocket. Inside, her brother Baric waits with a truth no ledger was meant to hold: their father Edren, long dead, made a pact with the Frost-Lord generations ago, and the debt is now due. When Maren discovers her own name inked into contracts she never signed, she turns to Velzar, a scarred outsider who knows the old bindings, and to Sael Dunmore, whose family was erased by the same cold covenant. As a parliament of Hollow Kings gathers to divide the inheritance, Justice Pern tightens the noose of lawful collection, and Cressa, the household archivist, uncovers journal entries from Poll Marn that name every soul already sold. Maren learns that Ullen Drave died refusing to pay, that Old Brennick vanished into the cold for asking questions, and that her cousin Baric has been quietly bargaining away cousins to keep the house standing. With the Frost-Lord's collectors at the door and the Hollow King's parliament demanding a heir, Maren must decide whether to honor a pact written in her father's blood, burn the ledger and doom the family name, or seize the binding itself and rewrite who owes what to whom.