Merciless Crown

EVERY CROWN MUST BE FED.

I came to this island to bury a king. I stayed to save him.

The fog lifted once. It will not make that mistake again.

Now I know what Carrington Hall is truly built on. What the seven founding families feed in the dark to keep their crowns clean. Whose blood the water has been waiting four hundred years to take. There was never a curse. There was a debt. And the bill has my name on it.

Cassius Vale was supposed to be the cruelest thing on this island. The king who smiles while he ruins you. But every king on this rock is just a boy they crowned to drown, and the closer the dark of the moon comes, the clearer I see the truth neither of us can outrun.

One of us walks out of the cove. Not both.

They want me to choose. Feed it, or flood it. Let him go under, or let the whole island follow him down.

I've read their arithmetic. Every column. Every name.

And I have found the one answer four hundred years of kings were too afraid to give.

Let them keep their crown. I am going to drown what it's built on.

MERCILESS CROWN is the second book in The Hollow Court, a dark new adult romance. Dark academia, a secret society, forbidden love, and a morally grey king who would burn the world before he let her go. Intended for readers 18+. Contains mature themes and content some readers may find disturbing.