The Butcher's Garden
On the scarred plains where the Hreth and Aldric banners have bled each other for a generation, Sera Voss tends the wounded in a swaying canvas field hospital alongside the elder healer Maeve. Every severed limb and every sutured wound she maps is a record of war's arithmetic , until a dying enemy soldier whispers a name she was told never to speak again, and the careful ledger of her life begins to unravel. Captain Caelum Hreth has ridden through cannon fire to find the traitor who sold his sister to the Aldric scouts, and the trail leads him directly to Sera's tent. What begins as interrogation becomes something neither of them can name , a fragile thing stitched together in the small hours between surgeries, when Maeve's herbs run low, Theon guards the perimeter with his jaw set hard, and Private Dollen's breathing grows thinner by the hour. Brida the scout brings word that Maren Aldric's forces are closing in, and somewhere in the camp Heth , the man Caelum trusts most , is already planning his next move. As Sera learns the precise shape of Caelum's grief and the terrible depth of the betrayal surrounding him, she must choose between the loyalty she was raised inside and the love she never meant to harvest. In the butcher's garden, the wounded keep no secrets for long, and even the healers must decide what they are willing to cut away.