anonymousindiegirl
They warned her a queen who trusts too easily doesn't stay a queen for long.
Three months on the throne, and Isabeau Verrell is still learning the weight of a crown she inherited too soon.
A court that hasn't decided if it believes in her.
A rival with a claim as old as hers, and a smile too easy to be safe.
A sister she loves completely, and trusts a little less than she'd ever admit out loud.
And Tobias Wren, kind and steady and exactly what her council wants for her, writing her letters full of orchards and quiet devotion. She likes him. She wishes, some nights, that liking him were enough.
She was born with something the rest of the court fears more than they'll say aloud: a power that lets her feel a lie before she understands it. A wrongness in a room, quiet as a held breath. A truth written beneath someone's skin, glowing faint and gold at her fingertips the moment she finally reaches for it. It has never once been wrong.
Then Silas Blackmere walked into her court like weather she hadn't been warned about, and made no secret of wanting her.
He's insufferable. Too charming, too unbothered, too sure of himself in rooms where everyone else is careful. Isabeau decides almost immediately that she can't stand him.
She is, unfortunately, a terrible liar to herself.
And every time he looks at her like that, her power, the one thing that has never once lied to her, goes quiet. Terribly, dangerously quiet.
Now Isabeau has to hold a throne she hasn't fully earned, choose between the man she's promised to and the one she can't stop thinking about, protect a sister who may not want protecting, and learn, before it costs her everything, what that silence really means.
That she's finally safe.
Or that she's already lost.