The Crown War

THE WAR HAS STOPPED BEING ABOUT THE THRONE.

What began as a fight over an empty seat has become something the North was never built to survive. An empire that once called itself a friendly neighbor has stopped pretending. Its gold, its mercenaries, and its ambitions are already inside the North's war rooms, tipping battles from a safe and comfortable distance. Alliances that wouldn't have spoken to each other a year ago are trading their oldest grudges for a chance at simply outlasting the season. Every house, every soldier, every desperate bargain is being made in the name of saving the kingdom. And no two of them mean the same thing by that word.

And south of the fog, the thing the old stories warned about has stopped waiting.

The deathless are moving. Slowly, patiently, the way something moves when it has all the time in the world and none of the fear. Every league they close is a league the North's fractured, exhausted, half-mutinous alliance is nowhere near ready to answer. The people holding this kingdom together were counting on having more time. They don't.

Crown War, Part Two brings the fight for the throne to its breaking point right as the true war, the one nobody in the North was ever prepared for, finally arrives.