Protect the Prince

Everleigh Blair has become the gladiator queen of Bellona, and the throne brings no peace. Her court is full of arrogant, demanding nobles who all want her crown, and an assassin attacks her in her own throne room.

Evie keeps to her planned trip to the neighboring kingdom of Andvari, where she hopes to win an alliance Bellona badly needs. The Andvarian king stands in her way. He wants to punish her for the deaths of his countrymen in the Seven Spire massacre.

Trouble runs deeper inside the Andvarian palace. Dark forces are at work there, and nobody in the court is safe. Evie's immunity to magic also begins behaving in strange, unexpected ways, and she starts to doubt that she is strong enough to be a Winter Queen.

Her heart is exposed too. Lucas Sullivan, the Andvarian king's bastard son, has become something to her, though she cannot say what. This is the second book in the Crown of Shards series, a fantasy that mixes magic, murder, adventure and romance.

The question driving the book is whether guarding a prince will prove harder than killing a queen.