What Salmaara has done to Yezhr haunts her. Above all else, she believes in the freedom to choose, fights for it. But in a desperate moment on a mauviasen clifftop, she took that from her lithian captor.

Prior to his tragic death, Salmaara ’s father told her his secret. Her true mother is Queen Kusae, she who fights the empress. But, Kusae is losing the war, and badly. The rebel queen’s forces are trapped in Arvitra Basin, surrounded, with no way out.

But that won’t stop Salmaara. She’s determined to reunite with her mother, and help her if she can. But will her mother want her back? Why was she thrown in the river in the first place?

Before she knows it, she’s swept up in imperial intrigues that take her from a city built into redwoods and a waterfall castle, to a treasure-filled palace made entirely of precious starsya, the most expensive metal in the world.

Will she save her mother, her people, and her friends by taking the hand of kinship offered by the Empress Velanoma? Or, will she risk her freedom, her life, her very soul to stand against Vias the Destroyer’s chosen for what she feels is right? Though she has read all about Vias the Destroyer’s dreaded liths, Salmaara has never seen one. In fact, she’s not even sure the nightmarish, mouthless creatures exist. 

She’s never been to Mauvias, land created by the goddess Vias the Destroyer, ruled by a ruthless immortal empress, a place where the very air is cursed with insatiable thirst, or to the ancient city Kalitoomba, a city of soaring glass towers ruled by a benevolent god-king. Following her rescue from a river, Salmaara lives a quiet life working in her father’s pottery shop, trying to discover who she is in a town where her golden eyes and fair skin make it clear she doesn’t belong. Illun, the man she loves as her father, is keeping a secret. An important secret.

Her looks aren’t the only thing that makes her different. Salmaara can sense where people are by their souls, and can connect her soul to theirs. One morning, she reaches for the feeling of her father’s soul and hears his thoughts, something she thought only the servants of the Destroyer could do. Before she can discover what it means, one of the liths appears, takes her captive, and carries her away to the gruesome prison city of Günhai, where even the stones cry out in pain. Within its lightproof halls, Salmaara will have to decide, will she do what she’s told, and become a pet, a tool of the empire, of the destroyer herself? Or will she have to risk her life and very soul, to discover who she truly is and how her powers will be used?