The Shattered King
A captive healer and a mysterious prince are drawn to each other in the midst of war and magic in a beguiling dark fantasy by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Charlie N. Holmberg.
The kingdom of Cansere is on the brink of war. Young men are conscripted from their homes, and a royal decree from the queen has made healing the only legal form of craftlock. Nym, a healer and beekeeper, is the sole provider for her family of seven now that her younger brother has been sent to the warfront. But when a letter comes from the queen, summoning Nym to the palace to heal Prince Renn, the kingdom’s ailing shut-in, Nym finds herself making the tumultuous journey from her family’s apiary to the capital city. Nym is determined to fail the queen’s mission and return to her younger siblings as soon as she can.
But escaping the castle’s hold isn’t as easy as failing a simple test. Prince Renn is cold and distant, and his illness is nothing like Nym has ever seen before, nothing she could ever imagine treating. In a moment of connection with Prince Renn, Nym manages to remedy the faintest symptom of his ailment—only to discover that no healer before has made such progress. Forced to become the prince’s official healer and a ward of the castle, and with her only hope of returning to her family hinging on the prince’s recovery, Nym must navigate the castle’s cruel and twisted court and uncover the haunting truth behind Prince Renn’s illness—even as she finds herself irrevocably drawn to him.
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Charlie N. Holmberg
Charlie N. Holmberg has a knack for finding magic in the margins—the kind of wonder tucked inside ordinary things, like folded paper, whispered spells, or the quiet ache of a lonely heart. Best known for The Paper Magician series, she writes fantasy that doesn’t shout but hums—spellbinding stories where imaginative worlds meet deeply human characters, and the line between enchantment and reality is deliciously thin.
Raised in Salt Lake City and shaped by the worlds of anime and Star Trek, Holmberg’s early love for storytelling bloomed in fan fiction before evolving into fully realized novels. Her writing often carries that same sense of earnest imagination—worlds that are clever and surprising without ever losing their emotional grounding. Whether it’s the steampunk whimsy of The Plastic Magician, the eerie elegance of The Fifth Doll, or the slow-burning celestial magic of Star Mother, her books unfold with the quiet confidence of an author who trusts her readers to follow her into the strange and the beautiful.
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