A kingdom stolen. A crown that cannot be claimed by the unworthy. A girl who never knew she was the heir.
Sixteen-year-old Emily Ashveil has always been the outcast of Thornwick - the girl people instinctively avoid, the girl who moves things with her hands when no one is looking. She has spent her whole life pressing her palms flat against stone and telling herself: not here, not now.
Then her grandmother opens a locked chest, and everything changes.
Emily is the hidden granddaughter of the murdered king - a true Seer-born heir, carrying ancient magic in her blood and a fragment of the Heartshard in her pocket. The Ember Crown, forged in dragonfire and locked in the capital's vault, has not responded to anyone's touch in twenty years. Until now, it is warming.
Hunted by King Malgrath's Trackers and guided by a resistance on its last breath, Emily must find the three pieces of the Heartshard scattered across a kingdom that wants her dead - all while learning to wield a gift she has spent her entire life suppressing. At her side: a blacksmith's apprentice with iron resolve, a childhood friend who chose to follow, a fourteen-year-old boy with ancient eyes, and allies forged in the deep forest where the trees remember everything.
But the most unsettling figure on her journey may be Aiden Vayne - brilliant, broken, and reaching for a coat at the edge of the grey northern sea - a man who was never born a villain and who has not yet decided whether he wants to remain one.
The Ember Crown is a coming-of-age fantasy about the cost of knowing who you are, the fire that lives in people the world has tried to extinguish, and the difference between being chosen - and choosing yourself.
Perfect for fans of An Ember in the Ashes, Throne of Glass, and The Cruel Prince.
Some are born with power. Others are forged by it.