The Mantle Of Hollow Kings
Eight Houses are converging on the capital to fight over that seat, each certain they alone deserve it, none of them agreeing on what deserving even means.
Cassian Vantyr has spent two years secretly sabotaging his own duels, losing on purpose, because the one thing he fears more than failure is succeeding. When the current Throne-holder Hollows and dies, every House claimant is summoned to the capital for the deciding trials, and Cassian can no longer hide in plain sight.
Alongside him: a miner in occupied territory who's just discovered she carries an illegal echo of the Mantle's power.
A forger's daughter who's the sharpest lie-detector in the realm, and doesn't know the biggest lie ever told is about her own birth.
An archive clerk who plays the fool to hide that he might be the most dangerous mind in the building, and has just overheard a secret an institution has spent eighteen years erasing.
None of them know each other exists yet. And for a long time, neither will the reader know who this story is actually about, or who's the hero and who's the villain, because in this world, that was never about power. It's about who flinches from the truth, and who doesn't.