The Twisted Throne

Three Amaridian vessels shadow the Victoria as a massive storm bears down from the east. The ship's captain wants to skirt the edge, but Ahnna¹ recognizes the tempest will push them into Amaridian waters. She proposes cutting east, directly in front of the storm — close enough that any pursuer will be swallowed.

James² overrides the captain and gives her the wheel. For hours she fights the helm while waves swamp the deck and tear sailors overboard. James² braces against her back, his strength the only thing keeping the ship on course.

A broken timber knocks her over the rail, and she dangles by one hand above murderous seas until Jor¹² drags her back aboard. One Amaridian ship is struck by lightning and sinks. They emerge into starlight, and Taryn¹¹ guides James² on the tack north.

In the port city of Sableton, Ahnna¹ escapes the royal estate after dark to learn what ordinary Harendellians think of Ithicana. She follows James² through the streets and watches him deliver death notices to soldiers' families — a duty he refuses to delegate.

Later, in a tavern, a man slaps her backside and James² hurls him across the room, sparking a brawl. He carries her home over his shoulder through streets caked in horse manure. In Fernleigh's hedge maze, she stitches glass from his knuckles by lamplight.

They confess parallel childhoods: mothers who bore them from duty, not love. Then James² catches her face in his bandaged hand and kisses her. She pulls him closer. He rips himself away, calls it a mistake, and tells her Harendell will devour her. She shoves past him into the darkness.

At the Sky Palace, King Edward³ greets Ahnna¹ with warmth, tossing his crown on a chair and calling her his co-conspirator against Silas. But William⁷ doesn't appear until the banquet is half-finished, arriving drunk with friends.

His first words reference the Maridrinian scar on her face, implying she'd been violated. Ahnna¹ responds by describing how she killed the soldier who cut her and left his innards for the sharks. Edward³ chuckles; William⁷ seethes.

Afterward, father and son erupt into a savage private argument where Edward³ declares he has cursed God for naming William⁷ his heir instead of James.² Virginia⁸ begs James² to intervene. He steps between them but cannot heal what decades of cruelty have broken. Alexandra⁴ later whispers to James² that his very existence is William's⁷ damnation.

Assassins strike on the Sky Palace's outer wall. James² yanks Ahnna¹ backward just as a blade slashes where she stood. She fights one attacker and hurls him off the thousand-foot tower; James² kills the other. But the blade was coated with wraithroot, an Amaridian poison that accelerates the heart until it tears apart.

The only cure is sedation, which Ahnna¹ refuses — terrified to be unconscious, defenseless, as she was the night Southwatch fell to the Maridrinians. Her heart races toward death. James² kneels before her and promises to keep watch until she wakes. She swallows the sedative. Eighteen hours later, she opens her eyes to find him in the chair beside her bed, stubble-dark and sleepless, exactly where he promised to be.

Alexandra⁴ visits Ahnna's¹ rooms and doses her tea with a laxative — painful but harmless — proving that if she had wanted to kill Ahnna,¹ she could have done far worse than wraithroot. She calls Ahnna¹ a disappointment who fights only the enemy before her while ignoring the one shooting from afar. She leaves the antidote and two chilling words: do better.

Meanwhile, Jor's¹² health deteriorates in the cold climate. Ahnna¹ arranges for him to return to Ithicana, secures Taryn¹¹ a place at Briarcliff Conservatory — the singing career her cousin always dreamed of — and sends Bronwyn¹⁰ as companion and protector. Ahnna¹ is now alone in the Sky Palace, reliant on Harendellian guards selected by James,² with no one she fully trusts within hundreds of miles.

For years, James² has secretly served as liaison between his father³ and his uncle Cormac,¹³ King Ronan's brother, negotiating to open Harendell's border with Cardiff for free trade. The planned alliance would redirect commerce north instead of south through Ithicana's bridge — an outcome that would devastate Aren's⁵ coffers.

When James² confronts Cormac¹³ about the Sky Palace assassination attempt, his uncle admits without remorse that he sent the attackers and disguised them as Amaridians. If Ahnna¹ marries William,⁷ a Cardiffian alliance becomes impossible.

James² slams his boot onto Cormac's¹³ chest and threatens to sever his hands. But the threat cuts both ways: if the Cardiff treaty collapses, Harendellian women with Cardiffian blood will keep burning at the stake. James's² mother's dream of peace dies with it.

King Aren⁵ arrives secretly in Verwyrd to find Ahnna¹ in an alehouse with William.⁷ He tells her Harendellian merchants are defaulting on bills at Northwatch, resentment toward the bridge is spiking, and he believes Edward³ orchestrates the shift. He orders her home.

She refuses, nearly hyperventilating, unable to admit that returning means conceding she has failed again. James² finds them, draws his sword on Aren,⁵ and forces the king to leave. But Georgie⁹ — James's² closest friend and lieutenant — has had spies tailing Aren.⁵

They overheard him mention needing Amarid's support against Harendell. Georgie⁹ confronts Ahnna,¹ compares her to Lara⁶ — a fox in the henhouse — and places her under heightened surveillance. She begs him not to escalate, knowing one misstep could doom Ithicana.

On a ride to Abertford, Amaridians ambush James² with a dozen men. Ahnna¹ races after him on Dippy, shooting pursuers from horseback at full gallop. A stampeding cattle herd and a tornado converge on the open Ranges, forcing them into an abandoned cellar.

In the darkness, with wind tearing the world apart overhead, Ahnna¹ confesses everything — Ithicana's empty coffers, her guilt over the invasion, her drunkenness the night Southwatch fell. James² listens, knowing his own plans for Cardiff trade would devastate the people she is trying to save.

Then restraint collapses. He tears her clothes away; she pulls him into her. At the final moment, he stops — because she belongs to his brother.⁷ Both know this cannot happen again. Both know they are already ruined.

Edward³ summons Ahnna¹ to the empty throne room and places Alexandra's⁴ crown on her head. He tells her she reminds him of someone — not the queen, but Siobhan, James's² mother, the love of his life. He reveals that Katarina of Amarid murdered Siobhan, not Alexandra.⁴

He speaks of vengeance and of changing Harendell's trajectory forever. Before departing, he says something chilling: that the queen is already dead. Ahnna¹ finds a bird skull on the floor — a Cardiffian ceremonial object — and pieces together that Edward³ is forging an alliance with Cardiff.

Trade will flow north, bypassing Ithicana's bridge. She finally understands what James² has been hiding. Then Georgie⁹ locks her in her rooms on Edward's³ orders, sealing her away from whatever storm the king is about to unleash.

Alexandra⁴ helps Ahnna¹ escape her locked room, recognizing they share an enemy in Edward's³ plans. Ahnna¹ crashes the ball wearing a leather gown from Lara,⁶ her mother's Ithicanian crown, and the family necklace. Edward³ announces the Cardiff alliance, reveals that James's² mother was King Ronan's sister — a princess, not a servant — and declares war on Amarid for her murder.

Then William⁷ enters with Lestara¹⁴ on his arm, the Cardiffian exile now dressed in silk and fur, married to the crown prince that morning. Every eye in the ballroom turns to Ahnna.¹ She publicly tells Edward³ his word is worth no more than Silas Veliant's, then strides from the room as two hundred nobles stare in silence. The Fifteen-Year Treaty is dead.

After the ball, Edward³ unveils the deepest layer of his scheme to James.² He married Siobhan before wedding Alexandra,⁴ making James² — not William⁷ — the legitimate firstborn heir. Edward³ plans to eventually name James² his successor, marry him to Ahnna,¹ and fund a coup to overthrow Aren,⁵ installing Ahnna¹ as queen of Ithicana.

A triumvirate linking Harendell, Cardiff, and the Bridge Kingdom. James² is stunned. He knows Ahnna¹ will never forgive the deception — never cooperate with deposing her own brother, no matter what Aren⁵ has done. Edward³ waves this aside, insisting she'll come around once she understands the long game. James² empties the bottle, knowing his father's confidence is catastrophically misplaced.

As Ahnna¹ prepares to flee the palace, Alexandra⁴ intercepts her in the corridor. The queen steals one of Ahnna's¹ knives and, without hesitation, drives it through her own hand, then her own cheek, then her own abdomen. She collapses into Ahnna's¹ arms, screaming for help. Elsewhere in the palace, Edward³ lies dead — stabbed forty-seven times in his bed.

Guards arrive to find Ahnna¹ cradling the bleeding queen, soaked in blood, her knife the weapon. James² appears with his sword drawn, grief obliterating reason. Ahnna¹ pleads her innocence, but her last words to him echo in both their minds — a threat to kill anyone who came near her. Every piece of evidence points to one woman. Alexandra⁴ whispers a single word: run.

James² pursues her through the palace corridors. Ahnna¹ barricades a room, ties curtains into a rope, and climbs out the window — a thousand feet above Verwyrd. The fabric tears. She falls, catches a lower railing by her fingertips, and hauls herself onto the spiral path.

At the stables, she vaults onto Dippy bareback and the racehorse clears the locked gate in a single magnificent leap. She swims him across the freezing river and vanishes into darkness. Days later, hunted across Harendell by soldiers and civilians alike, she passes a foundry called Cartwright — C.F. — and finally understands.

Alexandra⁴ funded the sharpened weapons Silas used to invade Ithicana. The queen's conspiracy stretches back years, far deeper than anyone suspected. Ahnna¹ turns west toward Amarid. Not to flee, but to bring the fight home.