If you want to burn a kingdom, you better be ready to put on a show.
When the King's taxmen execute the only father he's ever known, Jamie Campbell watches his life collapse in a single afternoon. Branded expendable by the Crown, he flees Taylor's End with a blade, a wound that won't stop bleeding, and nothing left to lose.
Beyond the reach of law, he crosses paths with The Black Rider—a disgraced knight turned mercenary whose name alone keeps villages awake at night. He should leave Jamie to die. Instead, he offers something more dangerous than mercy: direction.
Together, they devise a plan as reckless as it is precise: infiltrate the royal court as part of a traveling theatre troupe, enter the castle under false names, and stage a performance designed to end a dynasty.
But the closer Jamie gets to the throne, the more he uncovers—about the monarchy, the man who forged him, and the blood running quietly through his own veins.
And beneath the castle, something older than crowns and bloodlines begins to wake.
