The Silence of the Northern Bride

Cerise Steele was born to be the perfect noblewoman: poised, quiet, ornamental. The first daughter of the prestigious Winter House of Steele, she was married off at sixteen to a man she did not choose, and spent years locked in the cold elegance of court life—polished on the outside, quietly unraveling within.



But when her husband is found murdered under mysterious circumstances, Cerise flees the golden cage of her ruined estate and assumes a false identity as a maidservant on a royal military campaign. In the dirt and chaos of the common world, she finds something unexpected: freedom, friendship, and the forbidden taste of a life she was never meant to have.



As she draws closer to the capital, to danger, and to King Damian de Rohan—a blunt, stoic warrior-king who suspects more than he says—Cerise must navigate a kingdom teetering on the edge of unrest, a growing conspiracy surrounding the elemental runes that hold the empire together, and the pieces of herself she buried long ago.