The Hollow Throne of Vervain

When a bergamot-scented letter arrives three days after her grandmother's funeral, cartographer Maren Ashvale inherits more than grief , she inherits an unfinished map of Vervain, a forgotten kingdom erased from every atlas in the Emberfall Empire. Across its glass-skinned plains, seven queens were unmade, their tombs rejected, their songs left incomplete in a library that breathes. With exiled Emberfall knight Caelith Vey as her reluctant guide, Maren crosses the Whispering Orchard, decodes Madame Orith's ciphers, and traces the lines her grandmother fled decades ago , lines that the Hollow Court's executioners, and now the Empire's sky-ship fleet, will kill to possess. Each stroke of her pen awakens the Inkborn Creature, revives the visions of the Seven Queens of Vervain, and draws her closer to the Unnamed sleeper beneath the Hollow Throne. To finish the map is to restore a kingdom and doom it. To abandon it is to hand the Empire the weapon it needs to bury Vervain forever , and to leave Caelith's oaths, her grandmother's silence, and the queens' final song unresolved.