Sylvanus

Prince Sylvanus Zulikaarme has spent years playing the dutiful son while quietly preparing for the day he may have to stand against his father. Then a letter arrives bearing the seal of a dead man.

Koen the Gray-his elder brother, lost for three years-is alive. Suddenly, the rebellion Sylvanus has been building toward no longer seems quite so impossible. If he can reach Koen, he may finally have a brother willing to stand beside him.

So Sylvanus leaves Runemaul in secret and rides north toward Blackdown. Across the empire his father forged, grievances that once reached him through whispers, councils, and distant reports become impossible to keep at a ruler's distance. Old wounds remain beneath his father's promised peace, and powers his new world failed to bury still linger in its forgotten places. The farther Sylvanus travels, the more the road tests everything he thought he understood about power, loyalty, and the difference between ruling men and leading them.

Somewhere in the Northlands waits a brother who has survived a journey of his own. Sylvanus rides north believing Koen may be the man who can turn defiance into rebellion. He does not yet know the road is making him into the brother Koen may need just as much.