Janine and Annis have been summoned to the Fortress of Inverness on charges of treason. Each believes herself the rightful Queen of the West; each carries the scar of royal blood and the mystical flames of the Quickening. One was born to the crown; the other was raised to it.
The trial is a lie. The ruthless Colonel Jamieson is no servant of justice, and the two queens are walking into a trap. Inside the walls, loyalties fracture. Queen Annis plots resistance while, beyond the moats, a MacDonald army waits in disguise. Their only link? Two extraordinary children known as "The Spiders," who crawl through ancient chimneys carrying secrets between allies.
Thrown together in the depths of Woden’s Well, the rivals discover a secret that shakes the foundations of everything they believed about their lineage and their lives. Some truths are worth more than a throne.
The Fortress is Book 7 of The Fire Tree series - where a reckoning 800 years in the making begins.
