What the Thorns Keep
The thorn-mark had breathed against Kael Veyne's skin for six years before it finally lifted , a long, wet exhale of dark umber that left his forearm raw as old plaster. What it had bound him to was the Circle of Chancellor Soren, the old compact that kept the realm's peace and held Kael's loyalty like a leash of living bark. Now the seal is broken, and the Circle has begun to shatter from within. Chancellor Soren demands fealty renewed in blood. Commander Vex rides at the head of a host that calls the Chancellor tyrant. In the provinces, Maren Ashgrove stirs a bloodline long thought extinguished, while her sister Lira whispers to Kael of debts the Circle never settled. Cade Veyne, Kael's own brother, has taken the cloth of Brother Cade's order and refuses to take a side at all. As the thorn-marks begin surfacing on others , on Thessaly, on Pell, on Drossa, even on the silent Voss , Kael must decide what kind of binding he is willing to wear next. The Circle was not the only power that ever wanted him. And the thorn that grows back is always the one that draws the deepest.