The Severed Crown

Mira Thornwood has been running for years , from her name, her past, and the kingdom that would see her hanged. A sellsword with a losing streak, seven bruised ribs, and a blade she can barely lift, she fights barefoot in a backwater fighting pit just to keep bread in her pack. When a hooded stranger in the crowd presses a sealed contract into her palm and a purse heavy enough to buy a new life, Mira takes the work without asking questions. She shouldn't have. The contract names no employer, but the target is clear: smuggle a man called the Thornward Defector past the Silver-Wolf Riders and the spymaster Captain Ystride, through lands bled white by a civil war no one admits is happening. The reward is the kind of gold that crowns are bought with. The penalty is a traitor's grave. Dragged from pit-fights to road-convoys with a wagon-driver named Halcen, a hedge-witch who sees too much, and the volatile mage Vesh, Mira learns the defector carries a secret that could topple Queen Thessaly , or save her. The severed crown of an older dynasty waits in the wings, and three kingdoms are ready to bleed for it. Mira was hired as a sword. Now she is the only thing standing between a throne and the grave. And the only way out runs straight through the hooded man who hired her , whose face she has never seen, and whose voice she will never forget.