Epic Fantasy. Magic. Love. The city is failing and no one else can see it. Its soldiers exploit the castle's servants, confident that deadly wielders have been exterminated; wars are fought to encourage otherwise absent mortality; countless people suffer from the terrible pangs of nalka, the hunger for intimacy; and all the while its king concerns himself with choosing which of his disappointing concubines to execute next.The duty falls upon the king's son, Kahr Morghiad of House Sete'an, to restore the city's strength and the army's purpose. In his attempts to right these wrongs, he uncovers darker horrors and encounters a woman with forbidden powers - a woman who could be his greatest ally or his greatest threat.