The Crescent Heir
"It broke something in him that night—something that never fully grew back, no matter how many years passed, no matter how he tried to bury it under duty and laws. Jebediah was twelve years old when his father died. Twelve, Anna. That alone would break any child. The grief didn't just hurt him—it shattered him, right down to the marrow."
Anna didn't breathe. Outside, somewhere distant, a bird called once and fell silent.
"And when he learned—when we learned—that his father hadn't simply died, that he'd been poisoned, deliberately, by another clan—one of the four great families that ruled the old world back then, families so powerful they don't even exist in history books written after that n