The Empire of Vishir has lost its ruler, and the fight to save Seravesh from the Roven Empire is looking bleak. But it's hard to play a game where the only person who knows the rules wants to kill her. The jewel Radovan has put around her neck will pull her power from her in thirty days. Without any hope for help from the south, without any access to her magic, alone in a hostile land, Askia is no closer to freeing her people than she was when she fled to Vishir. Yet she'd trade her life for a chance to save Seravesh. The problem: she may not have that choice.