Fugue of Fire

The sky stopped burning. The rift closed. Nobody won cleanly.

Eagle's Wing is gone. The shadows that slipped through the breach before it sealed are still loose in the world, learning the landscape, looking for hosts. And the kingdom that defeated them is too busy celebrating to notice.

Dorian Silversong and Ilmarinen Steelhammer embark on a kingdom-spanning quest to reforge Breheimen's sword of state from the rarest material in the world, gathering the Muse-touched craftsmen and knowledge needed to do the impossible. Their young apprentice Revan Aethelstan gets his first real test far from the safety of lecture halls.

In the cloisters of the Church of the Muse, the elderly theologian Phrygian Eobanus nails a parchment to the great doors — a scholar's seal, not a hammer's nail; a mark of discussion, not defiance. He does not know yet that he has just begun the most consequential reform argument in five generations.

And in the Silean baronial embassy, Lady Seraphina Ravenscroft watches her daughter Rosalind deteriorate from a possession she barely understands. When a mysterious figure offers her a perilous opportunity, Seraphina does the math and makes her choice. She has always been the most dangerous person in any room. Now she's about to prove why.

A bard and a smith set out to reforge what was lost. A scholar goes to war with his own Church. A mother makes a bargain with darkness to save her daughter — and discovers she's better at it than anyone expected.

Three stories. One fugue. The Muses' War continues.