Let The Stone Know You

He came to Caeloria to build a career. He had no idea it was also where he was born.

Julian Aster is twenty-one years old, brilliant, adopted, and running out of options. Rejected from the French diplomatic service for lacking the right connections, he applies on impulse to a posting in Caeloria - a small constitutional monarchy he knows almost nothing about - and is accepted within days. He takes it as luck. It is not luck.

In Aurelia, Caeloria's sun-drenched capital, Julian is assigned to serve as assistant to Prince Alexander Veynar: charismatic, calculating, and almost immediately insufferable. The prince who needs his coffee carried and his affairs covered up is not the prince Julian expected - but he is also, Julian suspects, not entirely the prince he pretends to be.

Then Julian touches a ceremonial dagger at a state gala, and a fragment of ancient crystal glows in its hilt. A woman who survived a massacre twenty-one years ago watches from across the room, and recognizes what she sees.

What follows is a reckoning Julian is not ready for: a resistance operating in the palace's shadow, an Oracle who confirms what he refuses to believe, a regent who has just been told that someone has arrived who should not exist - and a prince who is rapidly becoming the one thing Julian most cannot afford.

Let the Stone Know You is the first volume of The Heir of the Stars - a political fantasy of stolen thrones, designated heirs, and the impossible question of what you owe a kingdom you never chose.