Madness and Gods — V.S. Holmes

“I wanted to see cities, learn the beauty of this world. Instead, in a single, bloody minute I learned the danger of ignorance and the impermanence of innocence. I did not appreciate peace until I was rotting in a Banis prison cell. Now I just want to silence the person crouched inside my head. I left looking for wisdom.

Instead, I went mad.”

No one was prepared for the chaos mending the world unleashed. With Alea and Arman gone and the queen dead, Athrolan faces civil war. The kingdom fractures between two heirs -- the disinherited and senile Daymir Blackhouse, and the Dhoah' Laen's rumored child. Except Alea's mad son does not know about the power in his veins. Imprisoned in Ban, which teeters on the edge of its own war, his fragile mind may not survive the week, let alone a battle for the crown. The soldier who found him, however, sees more than an enemy in Athrolan, and uses her inability to speak to burgeon her growing rebellion.

Whoever runs from the crown faster -- and survives their bloodline's curse -- will determine the Athrolani heir.

Madness and Gods is the third installment in the Reforged series and takes place almost twenty years after the events of the award-winning first book, Smoke and Rain.