FANTASY

The Queen’s Blade

By Lena Strand

She was raised to wear the crown. He was bought to betray her. The fire in the north will burn every lie between them.

Princess Aurienne Merevall has spent nine years planning her escape: maps under a floorboard, coins skimmed from ribbon accounts, a life where nobody watches her. Then her mother begins to die, and the law speaks plainly. Averen will not crown an unmarried queen.

Edric Vane is the finest blade in the Queen's Shields, sworn to guard the heir's body and forbidden, on pain of death, to touch it. He is also the Chancellor's creature, purchased at nine years old and planted at her side to report her every move. For two years his reports have been perfect, dutiful, and false, because somewhere between a market bridge and a dawn-lit training barn, the spy chose the woman over the master.

Now the suitors are arriving, the dragons of the Reach are waking three centuries early, and beneath the marriage law lies a buried covenant with terms written in fire: the crown must not stand alone. Blood freely given. Truth spoken standing. The fire takes the lie and the liar.

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