“Something rotten spreads. Something greedy takes.

I ask myself what coin, unjustly taken, will be the last.

What gust of wind will be the one that topples a precariously perched empire?

As I look out at my people, I think it will be me.”

Reeling from the loss of her family, twenty-year-old Alyx is clawing her way through her days as a healer’s apprentice in Suri –a country where cruelty and injustice reign. Her days are spent avoiding the sadistic attention of the Pretty King’s soldiers, the Crows.

But her life, frozen in her past, is thrown into the fire when she discovers her mentor is aiding rebels. Indiscretions come to light quickly when neighbors turn against neighbors. When the Crows descend upon her, only her unknown, monstrous power enables her to escape. She finds herself running for her life alongside a group of otherworldly strangers with an agenda of their own.