Vaelor is dead. The land doesn't seem to know that yet. Lyra Verren can feel it through the earth, the ley-lines still hemorrhaging, still draining toward Thornspire like a wound that refuses to close. Killing the king shattered his pact. It didn't stop the Ministry of Thaumaturgy. And the ancient entity coiled around Kael Ravaryn's soul is waking, hungry, and it recognizes what's burning in Thornspire's corrupted sky. She should be leading her rebellion through the wreckage of war. Instead they're running east through a blighted wasteland, hunted by elite Pyre Knights, soldiers Kael himself once trained, while the answers they need rot in ruins ahead. He was the Hound of Cinders. He burned villages, served a tyrant without hesitation, left a ledger of sins she knows by heart. She's still here. That terrifies him more than the hunters behind them, more than the thing waking in his blood. The corruption is spreading. Something ancient is stirring. And the bond between a fire warlock and an earth druid may be the only weapon left that nobody expected. Book Two in the Rebels of Flame and Fern series. Scroll up and start reading.