A Crown of Salt and Stars
Alexander Vale · Romantasy · Ashen Courts · Book 2
About this book
She rewrote the tithe in her own blood. The Veil tore. Now both courts want her law judged. Isolde Marlowe did the impossible. Married to the exiled prince Kaelan Ashvane under a contract written in living ink, she refused the heart-tithe that killed every Treaty Bride before her — and rewrote the seventh clause herself, in her own blood. The tithe of hearts became a tithe of truths: every court must now speak, aloud and binding, what it has kept hidden. In A Crown of Salt and Stars, the bill for that miracle comes due. Malachai Thorn — the spymaster her law forced to confess a king's murder in open court — is answering with a counter-court of his own, and a coronation drafted in an ink Isolde has never heard ring. Across the water, the Ferryman-King trades in crossings, and people are among his cargo. In Velmar, Regent Vess's secret register names eleven living Verbatims — and someone is hunting them, one by one. And through the tear above the lake, the Kept are crossing. Their queen, enthroned by the Veil itself, reads every truth Sol's world now speaks aloud. She has already sent one messenger, wearing a dead woman's ring. She is waiting for an answer.