The Bones Beneath the Crown

For ten years, Elena Veyre has survived court by perfecting the ancient female art of being useful, agreeable, and forgettable enough not to frighten powerful men. Her world changes when the queen is declared dead. Even more so when she starts talking to Elena from beneath the cathedral floor. She says the king murdered her. She says the woman buried in the royal tomb is someone else. And she gives Elena one command: find her real body before the king remarries. Because whoever possesses the corpse of a crowned monarch can command the spirits of everyone who ever swore allegiance to them. Unfortunately, Elena discovers inconvenient queens have been disappearing from history for generations. Her reluctant ally is Bastien Rook, the king's dangerously appealing illegitimate brother, whose own mother vanished twenty-five years ago. Now Elena must investigate a monarchy built on selective memory and dead women expected to obey even after death. But what if finding the queen is exactly what someone wants?