The Stolen Heir

The Stolen Heir is a fantasy novel by the American writer Holly Black, published in 2023. It is set in the world of her earlier Elfhame books.

Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent, and in the icy north Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel, where she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow to do her bidding and take her revenge. Suren was the child queen of the Court of Teeth and is the one person with power over her mother; she fled to the human world, where she lives feral in the woods, still haunted by the torments she endured at the Court, and passes the time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes she has been forgotten until the storm hag Bogdana chases her through the night streets and she is saved by Prince Oak, the heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and whom she has resented for years. The two of them are then led into a quest across the cold country.

Black's fantasy novels about Elfhame are written for young adult readers and turn on bargains, debts and the cruelty of the fairy courts, and this book begins a further sequence inside that world.