The Carrion Throne

Mara Ashveil came to the half-collapsed chapel on the river to collect a corpse and disappear. Instead she finds her brother Calen hanged as a thief, a city choking on ash, and a debt that should have died with him. Each thread she pulls, through graveyards, gambling dens, the black heat of Korrath's forge, the whispered prayers of Brother Fen, draws her deeper into a rotting court where Lord Sevryn plays at kingship, Ser Aldric Vane sharpens his ambition behind a knight's smile, and Prince Edran watches from a tower he may never leave. A ledger kept by the dead names a woman called the Old Mother. A black anvil rings in the night. Something vast and older stirs beneath the ash, and it remembers every name it is owed. To save her brother's name and her own soul, Mara must walk into the black heart of a city that has already buried its gods, and decide whether she will pay the debt in blood, in memory, or in something the living are not meant to give. The Carrion Throne does not care which. It only waits to be filled.