Book X in the epic Earls of Mercia Series.

England, June AD1042

The last of King Cnut’s sons is dead. England is once more without a king, but Harthacnut, with an eye to the future, made it clear before his death that Edward was to rule after him, an English king, of the House of Wessex, for the first time in over two decades.

But, while he might be English by birth, Edward has spent much of the last twenty years in Normandy, the birthplace of his mother. To become king, he might just have to rely on his mother and his earls to secure England for him, aware that there are those, mainly the Danes living in England, who might welcome a Danish, not an English king as their lord. Those who won’t want a return to the rule of the weak and ineffectual, King Æthelred, Edward’s father.

Leofric and his son, Ælfgar, are once more thrust into the heart of the politics that rule England, where the oath of a man or woman can mean much less than it should, and where ambition could thrust England once more into war with the very enemy that has ruled England since the death of King Æthelred.

The second Viking age of England is over, or is it?