Whispers Under the Kingdom
Princess Elyse has always been told that she is a fragile daughter of King Dominic, a strange young woman whose unnatural sensitivity is merely an illness. But Juliette Ashford knows that something is wrong. For six months, she has heard whispers beneath the High Citadel-voices rising from the earth, accompanied by a vibration that no ordinary person can hear. The king calls it madness. Juliette knows it is something else.One storm-filled night in the forbidden Weeping Gardens, Juliette discovers the source of the whispers. Beneath an ancient obsidian slab, a living boy is trapped in darkness, suffocating beneath the foundations of the kingdom. More terrifying still, he knows her true name: Juliette.The king's Inquisitor, Nathaniel Cross, is determined to keep the secret buried. His alchemical wards suppress the voice beneath the earth, while the kingdom above continues living under an unnatural blanket of forgotten memories. Juliette soon learns that the boy is not a nameless prisoner. He is Prince Finnian, the rightful firstborn heir-and her brother.Dominic did not kill Finnian during the royal coup. Instead, he sealed him alive beneath the kingdom and transformed his living body into an anchor for a terrifying magical mechanism. Through Finnian, Dominic has been siphoning the memories of the true kingdom from its people, allowing an entire realm to forget its rightful rulers, its murdered history, and the truth of the coup.With the help of unexpected allies-including the disgraced Inquisitor Cross and the ancient records hidden beneath the citadel-Juliette begins to understand her own identity and power. She is not the sickly princess Dominic created for the court. She is Juliette Ashford-Hart, sister to the rightful heir and a living vessel of the kingdom's buried resonance.But the seals are failing, and Dominic has only one response to a collapsing foundation: destroy everything before the truth can rise.Juliette and Finnian must awaken the ten thousand people preserved beneath the kingdom and restore the ancient harmonic bond between the royal bloodline and the living earth. When the siblings finally join their powers, the forgotten dead awaken, the buried kingdom begins to rise, and the silence imposed for twenty years is shattered by a voice that can no longer be controlled.Whispers Under the Kingdom is a dark fantasy of hidden royalty, buried memories, magical oppression, and awakening identity-a story about what happens when a kingdom's forgotten truth finally finds someone willing to speak it aloud
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