HEMRIDGE, NORTH CAROLINA, 1989
Cole assures Willow that the danger has passed. By closing the Queen’s Box, a cursed relic, they’ve stitched shut the seams between their Appalachian mountains and the shadow-world beyond.
Willow hopes he’s right. She crossed that threshold once, and she has no wish to set foot there again.
But when a church fire exposes a “ministry” that preaches salvation while exploiting the children in its care, their illusion of safety is shattered.
The child they rescue, seven-year-old Gage, is gentle, sharp-eyed, and carrying a creature that shouldn’t exist: a serpent heavy with a clutch of ashdrake eggs—creatures of wings and fire straining to be born. Through their bond, Gage learns a hard truth: the first threads between Hemridge and that other place were woven from tremendous love, but also terrible cruelty.
When Gage whispers old secrets aloud—lives stolen, evils wrought, rough beasts unfurling to reclaim the sky—Hemridge turns watchful. The deacons grow desperate.
Willow does too. Ever since she came back through the Box, she’s been keeping a secret of her own.
Cole’s little brother, Micah, isn’t dead.
He’s alive. Renamed. Rewritten.
And wearing a crown that was never meant for him.
Love brought Willow and Cole together. The truth—and the hollow crown it shields—may tear them apart.
