Ember
CourtA court that takes. A war-mage who doesn't bend.

The World

Sera is a disgraced intelligence operative sent to an enemy court under a diplomatic compact that barely qualifies as protection. Sorin's court runs like a campaign headquarters — disciplined, hierarchical, a war being won slowly enough to feel like losing. The city burns in the Ashfield glow on the horizon. The throne has been empty long enough that everyone is pretending they haven't noticed.

Sera catalogues everything, trusts nothing, and is carefully not thinking about what the Ashfield means or why the court needs an intelligence operative under diplomatic cover rather than a diplomat. The series is told in Sera's first-person voice — dry, precise, and increasingly compromised by the specific difficulty of working in close proximity to someone whose judgment you have started to respect.

Some power structures only survive because no one has been stubborn enough to stay and watch them fall.