The Last Ember
Calla Vyreth arrives at her aunt's bedside to find Queen Ilyana already dead , and a conspiracy of dragon-priests, led by High Priest Halvor Caine, sealing Ravenshade Keep from the inside. Chancellor Oswin Greycrest has crowned himself regent. Commander Sorel Briar commands the gates. The only witness who could expose them, Archivist Maren Thistle, has vanished into the forbidden stacks beneath the keep, where Head Archivist Pell keeps records the order would rather burn than read. But the queen left Calla more than grief. Pressed into her palm, still warm, was an iron key carved with the sigil of Vaeltharos , the last dragon, long believed extinct, whose fire the priesthood has spent centuries claiming to channel from the gods. The key opens a vault Halvor Caine will do anything to keep sealed, because inside lies proof that the dragon-priests are not the bridge between mortal and divine, but the lie standing between them. Allied with the disgraced Sir Dain Ravenscar, the exiled Lord Veylan Ashborne, and a strange ally called Ygra who speaks as though she remembers a world before the priests, Calla must descend into the archives, evade Lord Stevan Morrow's hunters, and reach the last ember before the order snuffs it out. If she fails, Vaeltharos dies, the lie becomes law, and a kingdom kneels forever to a faith built on ash. The only way out is through the dark , and the dark is already watching.