Of Thorns and Tide

In a salt-crusted cottage clinging to the edge of a restless bay, Thessaly Vane tends her mother's grave and listens to the shade that still whispers from the cellar roots, until the day a blood-bound secret forces her above the tide line and into the crosshairs of a crown. Royal soldiers arrive bearing the sigil of King Theron, hunting a vanished heir whose lineage runs, inconveniently and dangerously, through Thessaly's veins. Reluctantly drawn into the gilded court where Queen Mother Iselda watches with knowing eyes and Lord Marrick circles like a storm, Thessaly finds her only unlikely ally in Caelum Ardenne, a guarded man whose honor may be a lie and whose touch feels like a promise. But trust is a luxury she cannot afford. Sergeant Aldric suspects her, Wren Solenne knows more than she admits, and the shade of Thessaly's mother grows restless, urging her toward a truth that could save her bloodline or destroy it. As the court's poisonous games tighten around her, Thessaly must choose: surrender the quiet life she's protected all year for a throne she never wanted, or watch everyone she has begun to love fall to the blades waiting in the dark. Some inheritances cannot be refused. Some tides cannot be turned.