The children of an assassinated emperor try to stay alive and avenge their father's death while continuing down their individual life-paths, one in a monastery, another training with elite soldiers, and one appointed a minister determined to prove herself to her people. The circle is closing. The stakes are high. And old truths will live again . . . The Emperor has been murdered, leaving the Annurian Empire in turmoil. Now his progeny must prepare...

Pyrre Lakatur doesn't like the word skullsworn. It fails to capture the faith and grace, the peace and beauty of her devotion to the God of Death. She is not, to her mind, an assassin, not a murderer--she is a priestess. At least, she will be a priestess if she manages to pass her final trial. The problem isn't the killing. Pyrre has been killing and training to kill, studying with some of the most deadly men and women in the world, since she was...

"Brian Staveley, author of The Emperor's Blades, gives readers the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy based in the world of his popular series the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, The Empire's Ruin. The Annurian Empire is disintegrating. The advantages it used for millennia have fallen to ruin. The ranks of the Kettral have been decimated from within, and the kenta gates, granting instantaneous travel across the vast lands of the empire, can...