The Thornbound Court

Queen Isolde Marrow lost her throne, her father, and her army in a single night when General Thane Ashgrove led the coup that ended the Marrow dynasty. Three years later, with a wasting curse spreading from the old capital’s thornwood border, Thane offers her an impossible bargain: marry him, rule beside him, and use the crown’s old blood-magic to break the curse before it swallows both their kingdoms whole. Isolde accepts on one condition, that the marriage never becomes anything more than the alliance it is meant to be.

Thane took the throne to stop a war Isolde’s father was about to lose them all, not out of ambition, and he has spent three years being hated for a decision he would make again in a heartbeat. Ruling beside the woman whose father he killed was never meant to be easy, and it becomes unbearable in a different way entirely as Isolde’s fierce, unyielding competence starts to look less like an enemy’s weapon and more like the only thing holding either of their kingdoms together. As the thornwood curse reveals a darker truth about how Isolde’s father really died, the marriage of convenience becomes the one alliance neither of them can afford to lose, to the curse, or to each other.