The queen is dead. Her kingdom is not done paying.

As Farah works to rebuild Emari from the wreckage Behnaz left behind, Yasher struggles to master a Talent that refuses to be tamed. When a corrupted relic threatens to unleash an ancient Darkness, they are drawn into a battle of power, sacrifice, and divine reckoning. But the greatest threat isn’t the gods or the monsters—it’s the distance growing between them. If they cannot face what has already been lost, they may lose each other forever.

The queen is dead. Her kingdom is not done paying.

Farahnaz Rahnema, Hand of the Mashya, stands before a parliament that would rather argue about devastated fields than admit what its queen actually did. The wasting sickness was never a sickness. Behnaz à Radan fed on her own Talented to fuel her ambition, and half the court already knew. Farah is the only one willing to say it out loud. The Mashya stands with her. So does Siavash à Ardashir, a newer voice in parliament who is pressing her to decide what Emari becomes instead of only mending what Behnaz broke. Yasher does not love this development.

When a town on the southern cliffs goes silent, and a family escapes with a story about shadows climbing the rocks at night, The Mashya sends Farah and Yasher south to find out what has taken Sakasan, and what is still inside it.

The man whose Luck has carried him through every fight of his life can feel it failing. The child who once steadied them both is sketching shadows no one alive can decode. An old Emari woman who calls Yasher saqalu is teaching him things he is not ready to learn. And the Darkness that hollowed out Behnaz is not done with Emari, with Yasher, or with the Hand who is trying to hold what is left of them all.

The Veil of Takhsha is the second book in The Emari Chronicles, a Persian-inspired epic fantasy series of faith, power, and the brutal cost of becoming who you choose to be. For readers of The Jasmine Throne, The Stardust Thief, and The City of Brass.

The post The Veil of Takhsha appeared first on Amber Hansford - Fantasy Author.

In the kingdom of Emari, Farah, the newly appointed Hand of Mashyana, must join forces with Yasher, a charming foreigner who believes his “lucky charm” is the key to his fortune. As they race to recover powerful relics, they uncover dark truths about the queen’s betrayal and realize they may be the kingdom’s last hope.

She served her queen faithfully. That was her first mistake.

Farahnaz Rahnema was a foundling, one of those blessed by the gods who abandoned Emari with a Talent. She is now The Hand of Mashyana — newly elevated after years of doing the work no one else would do, named by a queen who has shaped her since girlhood and who calls her my dear and means it.

Her first task as Hand is a clean one. A relic has resurfaced in the city after centuries lost, said to hold the essence of the Divine, and it currently rests in the pocket of a foreigner who has no idea what he carries. Find him. Take it. Bring it home.

The foreigner is named Yasher. His luck has carried him too far for it to be only luck, and a child claiming to speak for an angel of the supposedly absent gods has already led Farah straight to him. And somewhere underneath the queen Farah loves, in a kingdom where the king has gone silent in Tamidh and the provinces are stirring, a Darkness is shifting that no oath of loyalty was ever meant to hold.

The Hand of Mashyana is the first book in The Emari Chronicles, a Persian-inspired epic fantasy of faith, betrayal, and the brutal cost of becoming who you choose to be. For readers of The Jasmine Throne, The Stardust Thief, and The City of Brass.

The post The Hand of Mashyana appeared first on Amber Hansford - Fantasy Author.