The Iron Isles rose from the churning gray belly of the Northern Ocean like the rotted teeth of a drowned god. Here, the wind didn't just blow; it shrieked, carrying the scent of salt, wet slate, and something ancient and metallic.
Sienna pulled her furs tighter around her throat as the small, jagged skiff bumped against the black stone of the quay. Her flight from the Silver-Crest had been a blur of freezing nights and frantic heartbeats, her hands still feeling the ghostly heat of the manor’s walls—walls that had turned against her the moment Nyx and her hounds had claimed them.
She was a creature of the court, a woman of soft silks and whispered poisons, but the Iron Isles stripped all pretension away. Standing on the dock was a line of silent, gray-clad men, their eyes as cold and in
