A queen without a heart. A kingdom built on sacrifice. When Runa Ashmere is chosen to become Queen Consort, she knows what it will cost her: her heart. For fifty years, the kingdom has avoided war through a monstrous practice. Runa is meant to be no different. But the Splitting does not erase who she was. As her vessel begins to fracture and forbidden memories resurface, Runa discovers that what the system depends on most is silence. In the shadows beneath the palace, among preserved hearts and unmarked graves, she finds allies who refuse that erasure: a keeper who remembers the dead, a goddess of lost things, and the remnants of herself that never consented to be hollowed out.