A Memory of Iron and Lace

When forger Wren Talverson accepts Lord Thresh's final commission, she expects a routine extraction, a wealthy man's indulgence paid in gold and silence. Instead, the memory she plucks from a dying boy carries the weight of a queen's buried conspiracy and the whispered voice of a Memory-Construct King who refuses to stay forgotten. Halloran warns her to run. Maren refuses to leave her side. And the Memory-Hound is already on her scent, drawn by the scent of memory that does not belong to Wren's own mind. As Lady Seraphine Voss maneuvers to seize power and Queen Aelindra's court fractures under the strain of stolen recollections, Wren discovers her gift for crafting false memories is the only weapon standing between the city's unraveling and a silence more terrible than any war. Mother Jessa offers sanctuary among the hedge-healers of the outer districts, but sanctuary means abandoning the sylph bound to her last forgery, a creature whose memories could either save the throne or condemn it. To vanish with her freedom intact, Wren must forget everything she has seen. To stay means forging a truth powerful enough to outlast iron and lace, queens and constructs, and the hound that hunts what others can only remember. But every memory she crafts costs her a piece of her own, and hers are almost gone.