Nikola Muckajev
The war is over. Nobody is hungry. No road is unsafe. Every citizen of Briarwake has been given a place, a duty, and a future-and nobody is allowed to refuse. Ivo and his friends survive on roads the Imperial Crown cannot recognize, searching for the eighth kingdom erased from every map. There they expect to find a weapon against Queen Sereda. Instead they find Ivo’s missing mother, a country where every promise may be abandoned, and a First Beast whose freedom can tear the world loose from itself.