The Crown of Shattered Skies
When Yara Voss sets her hammer to the anvil for the three hundredth time, she does not know she is forging the last horseshoe her daughter Elara will ever see her make. In the kingdom of Kethral, where the sky itself was shattered generations ago and held together only by the ancient craft of the Forgemothers, Yara is the last of her kind, and she is dying. The burden falls to Elara, a smith's daughter who never wanted a crown, a war, or the eye of Lord Cassius Vael, whose armies mass at the border while King Aldric's court tears itself apart over the succession. Torn from her brother Torin and the loyal Pip who has guarded her since childhood, Elara is thrust into a world of forged oaths and broken alliances. Theron Ashford's promises cut as deep as his hidden blades, and Dorian, Maren, and Sage each carry secrets that could mend the sky, or finish shattering it. To save the world from the doom written into the cracks above, Elara must master a craft that has killed every Forgemother who tried. The crown that holds the shattered skies together demands a sacrifice no one has ever been willing to make. Some thrones, the Forgemothers once wrote, are not meant to be worn, but to be unmade. The choice is hers: let the sky fall, or fall with it.