Adaeze has spent twenty-two years believing she is a bronze caster's daughter — hands calloused from the forge, ambitions no higher than the next royal commission.
She is wrong about all of it.
Her mother was the last daughter of a royal house the crown destroyed. And before she died, she bound Adaeze's future to a vow no one asked her to keep: on the day the crown prince takes the throne, he must marry the last daughter of House Ekpen — or answer to gods older than the palace itself.
Now the old king is dying. The prince is a stranger she has never met. And a single coral bead, hidden from her for nineteen years, has just changed everything she thought she knew about who she is — and what she owes a kingdom that tried to erase her family from history.
The throne wants her married. Her blood wants revenge.
