Germany, present day. Behind the altar of his family’s village church, Tim de St. Clere finds a gilded orb from Charlemagne’s treasury.

Stolen in a Viking raid in AD 882 and hidden in the Eifel hills for centuries, it should be a museum piece. Instead, it makes Tim a target.

The President of France is rewriting the historical record to claim Charlemagne’s bloodline, and the orb is the proof he needs. His men trail Tim and his wife across borders. They break down doors. Friends pay the price. Every record that could expose the lie is disappearing.

Tim’s only lead runs through his own family. A century ago, his great-grandfather hid clues around the family estate and then left Europe for good.

1914. Alexander de St. Clere trades his motorcar and comfortable life for a German fighter plane on the Western Front. Capture, betrayal, and a burning cockpit strip away everything he believed about the war. Then a dying officer hands him a secret that changes everything. Alex comes home, buries what he knows, and turns his back on glory.

Now his great-grandson faces the same choice.

A dual-timeline historical thriller of political conspiracy, set between WWI Flanders and present-day Germany and France: one family’s twelve-hundred-year secret, a relic of Charlemagne, and a president who would rewrite history to rule. For readers of Robert Harris, Kate Mosse, and Umberto Eco.

Book Three of the Sword Shatterers Trilogy.