The fool's path

Lothemia is a medieval kingdom in the unsettled thirteenth century, and this novel follows two knights, Sebastian and Raynar, whose friendship is tested by a woman whom one of them loves and the other has married. Sebastian is the heir to the duchy of Westfeld. He is handed a grim choice: help seize the duke of Gildren by ambush and imprisonment, or leave Raynar to rot in the dungeons of Eaglesheid. He frees his friend, but the bargain he made gnaws at him, and his efforts to undo the damage pull him deeper into a tangle of rival loyalties and desires. Without fully realizing it, he becomes a piece in a larger contest where the crown itself is at stake.

While Sebastian tries to protect the realm from treachery, Ella, a kitchenmaid, comes into possession of a golden key that opens the truth about her parentage. That truth could endanger the line Sebastian hopes to found. The book is the opening volume of a saga about this family, and it sorts fact from invention as it reexamines the story behind Cinderella.