The Court of Sunken Blades

Their bond survived the hearing. It might not survive what's coming for it next.Elena Marsh thought winning her freedom would feel like relief. Instead, it feels like probation - six weeks under Council observation, her scholarship flagged, every private moment with Folcard now required to happen in front of a chaperone. She's out of the fire, technically. She's also never been more watched in her life.Then a name from Folcard's own family history surfaces: ceremonial blades, sunk two centuries ago, capable of sealing a bond permanently - without the damage the Council's own separation ritual would inflict. If Elena and Folcard can recover them before their final hearing, they might control their own fate for the first time since the ice first bonded them together.They're not the only ones looking. House Ashveil has circled the Obsidian Court's decline for two generations, and they want the instruments for reasons that have nothing to do with love and everything to do with what a stable, controllable bond could be worth in the right - or wrong - hands. Standing between Elena and the truth is Eglantine: not quite enemy, not quite ally, a woman who knows exactly what it costs to survive by choosing the version of freedom someone else is willing to offer you.Six weeks. A council that wants to weigh her like an asset. A rival house that's already made its offer - and made it personal, aiming straight at the one thing Elena can't afford to lose. Some fights you win with testimony. This one, Elena and Folcard will have to win by going somewhere no one has looked in two hundred years.Book Two of The Glacial Chronicles - a forced-bond romantasy where surviving the hearing was only the beginning.