Marlena Gee

In the waning days of King Edward Tudor's life, the palace at Whitehall becomes a crucible of fear, ambition, and awakening power. Queen Cecily Harrow-young, dutiful, and chosen precisely because she was thought harmless-keeps vigil at her husband's bedside as the realm quietly fractures around her. But as the king's breath grows shallow, something ancient stirs beneath Cecily's skin: a warmth that coils like a living thing, a second heartbeat pulsing out of rhythm with her own.
When her eyes flicker with an unnatural green shimmer, she realizes the truth whispered only in old fireside tales-serpentine magic, older than England itself, has awakened in her blood. With Edward's death imminent, the succession becomes a battlefield. Mary Tudor gathers Catholic support. Elizabeth maneuvers from abroad. The twin princes-young, Protestant, and dangerously unprepared-hover as pawns in a game played by men far more ruthless.
Foreign powers circle like wolves, Spain and Denmark preparing to seize advantage the moment the crown falls. And within the palace walls, Cecily witnesses a secret exchange in the moonlit gardens: her husband's trusted secretary passing a hidden letter to a cloaked figure from the Spanish embassy. Treachery is no longer rumor-it is fact. As Cecily grapples with the serpent magic rising inside her, she seeks answers from Rowan Thatch, a mapmaker whose ink-stained hands trace patterns older than kingdoms.
He recognizes the currents surrounding her-ancient forces that mark her not as a pawn, but as a fulcrum. The tapestry she discovered, woven in shifting green and silver, is no mere decoration. It is a map of power, and Cecily stands at its center. But awakening power comes with a price. The court sees her as a girl to be set aside, a queen consort with no alliances and no heirs. They do not yet understand what she is becoming.
As conspiracies tighten, assassins move in shadow, and foreign agents infiltrate the palace, Cecily must decide whether to remain the quiet wife she was chosen to be-or embrace the serpent within and claim authority no council ever intended her to wield. The Serpent and the Crown is a sweeping tale of political intrigue, ancient magic, and the perilous cost of power. Set against a reimagined Tudor England where myth coils beneath marble floors and every alliance hides a blade, this novel follows a young queen who discovers that the greatest threat to the realm may not be the armies gathering beyond its borders-but the awakening force inside her that refuses to remain silent.
As the king's final hours tick away, Cecily must choose: bend, break, or rise. And when the serpent opens its eyes, England will never be the same.