Secrets Beneath the Glass Pane

by Ellis Carrington

Heat 3 / 5Novella · 12 chapters27,440 words1h 59m read~3h 3m listen

Dark has spent years reducing the Ashborn nobility to numbers on a ledger—cold, incorruptible, and careful never to trust a lord twice. When duty drags her to the Glass Court’s obligatory toast, she expects one more evening of silk smiles and hidden frauds. She does not expect the falcon.

The bird alights on the high gallery balustrade with a ring on its talon—not the tax-seal she anticipated, but something far more dangerous: a signet etched with open treason. Before she can decide what to do, an unnatural frost races across the nearest ward-pane, shatters it, and burns two names into the glittering air for every noble below to read. Hers. And Pax Frost’s, the exile-born lord she came to expose.

Now Dark and her enemy are running—through ash-dusted service corridors, forgotten ward-chambers, and the ember gardens before dawn—while someone in the Ashborn court directs hunters at their backs. The falcon was trained. The ring was switched. The ward-pane was no accident. And the closer Dark gets to the truth, the more certain she becomes that the trap was never meant to catch a traitor.

Court IntrigueEnemies To LoversDark Romantasy