Bastard of Buckingham

Adrian Blackwood has spent twenty-nine years as nobody, a London blacksmith with a locket he never opens and no memory of the mother who died leaving it behind. Then hired men come for him at the docks, and an old priest reveals what should have stayed buried: Adrian is the illegitimate son of King Edmund IV, and the king has just learned his son survived.A price is placed on his head. Guards flood every street. Adrian flees into the English countryside, where a wounded veteran teaches him to fight, a rebellion gathers around him without his permission, and each failed attempt on his life only grows the legend of the man they call the Bastard of Buckingham.But survival stops being enough the moment Adrian breaches the palace vault and finds proof that his mother was never the king's only secret. Somewhere beneath thirty years of quiet cruelty is a kingdom's worth of buried crimes, and the men and women who help him uncover them will pay for it in blood, loyalty, and everything they have left to give.Adrian never wanted a crown. He wants the truth told, the debt collected, and a father made to answer for the woman he let die alone.England is about to learn that some kingdoms fall not to armies, but to the sons they tried to erase.