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Kitt Blackbriar has never wanted a throne.
She has wanted full bellies, open roads, frightened tax collectors, and enough coin stolen from the king’s coffers to keep her people alive through winter. In the deep woods of Blackbriar, they call her the Laughing Thorn: thief, outlaw, nuisance, and the sharpest blade in a rebellion no one at court wants to admit exists.
Then Kitt robs the wrong royal caravan.
Hidden among the tithe chests is the Verdant Crown, an ancient relic of thorn, gold, root, and bone. The king claims it is his and will answer only to him. The old stories claim it once chose the rulers of the realm.
For Kitt, it blooms.
Now the false king wants his crown back, the starving villages are whispering that the forest has chosen a queen, and Kitt is being hunted by the one man disciplined enough to catch her.
Worse, the crown is not only waking for her. It is calling others to her side: Bram, the brutal forest-born Shield who loved her before prophecy found her; Kellan, the disgraced royal Sword sent to drag her to the gallows; Tristan, the silk-tongued court spy whose lies are almost as dangerous as his kisses; and Evander, the forbidden holy man who knows the crown’s blessing may be a curse.
Kitt refuses to kneel. She refuses to be worshiped. And she absolutely refuses to become the kind of ruler she has spent her life robbing.
But the king is bleeding the land dry.
And the crown did not choose a woman who could be tamed.
It chose a thief sharp enough to steal a kingdom back.
Kitt Blackbriar has never wanted a throne.
She has wanted full bellies, open roads, frightened tax collectors, and enough coin stolen from the king’s coffers to keep her people alive through winter. In the deep woods of Blackbriar, they call her the Laughing Thorn: thief, outlaw, nuisance, and the sharpest blade in a rebellion no one at court wants to admit exists.
Then Kitt robs the wrong royal caravan.
Hidden among the tithe chests is the Verdant Crown, an ancient relic of thorn, gold, root, and bone. The king claims it is his and will answer only to him. The old stories claim it once chose the rulers of the realm.
For Kitt, it blooms.
Now the false king wants his crown back, the starving villages are whispering that the forest has chosen a queen, and Kitt is being hunted by the one man disciplined enough to catch her.
Worse, the crown is not only waking for her. It is calling others to her side: Bram, the brutal forest-born Shield who loved her before prophecy found her; Kellan, the disgraced royal Sword sent to drag her to the gallows; Tristan, the silk-tongued court spy whose lies are almost as dangerous as his kisses; and Evander, the forbidden holy man who knows the crown’s blessing may be a curse.
Kitt refuses to kneel. She refuses to be worshiped. And she absolutely refuses to become the kind of ruler she has spent her life robbing.
But the king is bleeding the land dry.
And the crown did not choose a woman who could be tamed.
It chose a thief sharp enough to steal a kingdom back.