where the thorns grow

SYNOPSIS

Seven years ago, Rhysa Jiang ran. She buried her past, chose to start over from a clean slate. She became a near legend, the only female Iron Wolf, deciding to become something new. They've hunted her down ever since, and until now she'd managed to evade their search.

But now they've been invited to Sai. The Scarlet Palace. Her only home, her safe haven. And Rhysa has a suspicious feeling she's not going to be able to escape the Falcons' grasp this time. After all, she's a deserter, and those pay in blood around here.

Dominic Lang had learnt long ago that Rhysa's past was something that shouldn't be dug up. Sure, he had his suspicions, but after being partners for six years, you learnt to trust someone. And if there was one thing he knew about Rhys, it was that the girl was fearless. So her sudden terror makes no sense. Her sudden caution, her sudden reluctance to even show her face in public is completely baffling.

And he'll get to the bottom of this. Because Rhysa Jiang had been hiding the entirety of herself from him for too long, because there was nothing he loved more than a good mystery and challenge, and Rhys might just be the biggest one of all.

It was just what friends do.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

IT'S TIME FOR RHYS' STORY! i'm sure anyone who read hawk & sable is very interested to learn more about rhys, and here it is!! this story will also go more deeply into the structure of the iron wolves, and i started to make this a tiny project about spreading knowledge about courtesan culture in ancient china as well, most especially the qinglou woman who sold their art, not their bodies. they are, in my opinion, some of the most fascinating women of chinese history, and more people should know about them!

hope you enjoy, and thank you for sticking around this series for so many books!

this novel is the first of the court of bones series, which will consist of four books. court of bones is the third series in the silk and steel chronicles, and is a spin-off of the sable sisters and lady kuroki's school for girls. it can be read independently.

PLEASE NOTE

this world is based closely off our real one, and this includes the history and politics of each country. while much of it remains similar, please note that it is not meant to be 100% accurate, and i have added, omitted and edited as i felt necessary, especially regarding topics i feel like i haven't done enough sufficient research to tackle/i do not believe i could portray accurately/i personally do not feel is necessary for my world. neither do i personally agree with all the "counterparts" of more modern political issues that the characters within this story believe in. hence, please do not go after me if you disagree with what my characters believe in!

another major part i changed in, is the titles/ranks of saian (chinese) characters. i've taken a heavy western influence for them, using the lord/lady of (location) template instead of the historically accurate chinese ones. one of the reasons for this is because the titles and ranks of ancient china were visibly explicitly for men (the chinese character for a baron is literally the character for 'male'), and i found it difficult to fit them into a story where many titled females exist. also, I'm taking inspiration mainly from the Qing dynasty, which has an extremely complicated ranking system, so it's very difficult to research and understand.

as this is a story that heavily features espionage, the overlying arch of this entire series would involve a war between countries. hence, i've had no choice but to make one of the counterpart countries the general "enemy" of the story (melique). i do not view either the country it's based off or the people of the country poorly. i've done my best to mix multiple countries of various different cultures into one for melique in order to not offend anyone. currently, melique is geographically based off south american countries and inspired by meiji-era japan and french revolution and napoleonic-era france.

there is strong language and hints at explicit content within the story, though none of it is clearly shown. read at your own risk!

26/12/2021-7/3/2022