Flame Treader

Crystal Bound Book 3

By: DJ Bowman-Smith

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The war has no front line. It is already inside.

Sho endures. It is the thing she does best — outlasting grief, outlasting doubt, outlasting the slow fracture of watching someone she loves be happy with a person she cannot trust. She stays vigilant. She stays close. She does not break.

The king has reason to hope now. Queen Sneela carries his heir and the future of the shoken throne, and he wants, for once in his life, to believe that things will be well. Sho knows better. She knows how quickly a queen's arrival complicates the landscape of power. She knows how many new ways it creates for the wrong person to reach her king.

Outside the palace walls, the Trilands are fracturing. The Sturgar have not marched in force — they don't need to. Fear has done the work for them. Village by village, old loyalties are dissolving. The common people do not hate their king. They simply want to survive. And the Sturgar promise survival to those who kneel.

Mag'Sood waits. He is, above all things, patient. He knows the shoken will not be ready when he moves. He is almost certain they cannot be.

She was born to protect him. She is beginning to doubt it will be enough.

Flame Treader is the third book in the Crystal Bound series. For fans of Joe Abercrombie, Anna Smith Spark and George R. R. Martin.