The Thornbound Queen

When a charcoal burner's fire spirals out of control in the ancient Thornwood, seventeen-year-old Lyra Ashworth awakens something that should have stayed buried. Smoke curls through the black trees in unnatural patterns, and a hooded rider appears at the forest's edge, watching her home with unsettling patience. Within days, soldiers wearing Queen Isolde Maren's crimson sash arrive in Lyra's quiet village, asking questions about the blaze and the strange magic that rose with it. Lyra and her sister Elara are forced to flee, taking shelter with Granny Fen, the hedge-witch who knows more about the old bloodlines than she admits. As Lyra's untamed power grows stronger and harder to hide, the hooded rider draws ever closer, and Lord Halcen Drave begins moving pieces across the board in the capital. The queen seeks a lost heir. The Drave family seeks dominion. And a whispering shadow in Lyra's dreams offers her everything she has ever desired, in exchange for a price she does not yet understand. With civil war brewing and a dead queen's legacy reaching up from the roots of the Thornwood, Lyra must choose what kind of ruler she is willing to become, before the kingdom chooses for her.