Iron Blood: The Last Crown

The kingdom survived the siege. Now it must survive the peace - and decide what it is willing to become to stay free.Azari did not fall. But the cost of surviving has dimmed the Core, thinned the Guard, and left its king gravely wounded - and the Syndicate has not finished. A new commander rises from the empire's sealed rooms with a doctrine more terrible than any fleet: do not destroy the free kingdoms. Unwrite them. Take the Core that holds the memory of every people who ever refused to kneel, read it, and erase it - until no one anywhere remembers that freedom was ever possible.Kamau must finally choose the queen his heart chose over the queen his kingdom expects - a choice that could fracture Azari at the worst possible hour. Wanjiru, the enemy's weapon who became the city's salvation, carries a secret that will either crown her or destroy her. Njeri, the captain who loved a king in silence for eleven years, must decide whether her broken heart will break the city too. And out beyond the dark, a man called Oti - the architect of two sieges, a child of Azari who could never admit he wanted to come home - makes the choice that will finally carry him back through its gates.As the empire comes for the kingdom's memory, the keeper of that memory prepares the only defense that could ever stop them: a sacrifice that will cost Azari the soul who loved it most.This is the end of the saga. Some kingdoms fall. This one remembers. And the story that began with one city refusing to kneel ends with a child learning the sound of a free kingdom at dawn - and twelve more nations beginning, at last, to believe they might stand too.The Last Crown is the epic conclusion to the Iron Blood: The Azari Saga - an Afrofuturist trilogy of sovereignty, memory, and the children of the taken, inspired by the real African kingdoms that refused to be conquered.

Pages: 123, Paperback, Independently published