Vayne Savant is no closer to finding his wife than the day she vanished into the ground five years ago. Unable to turn his attention from the rising tensions with his rivals in Lakehaven, he recruits the assassin Ember Silvereye to continue his search.

 

Ember Silvereye wants only one thing: to find her people, the other humans turned Soultappers. When King Savant claims to know where they are, she reluctantly agrees to his quest. What she never bargained for was finding not Savant’s wife, but the son he has no idea exists. After she and the boy are captured by the brooding pirate Stedd Greycastle and his crew, she’s faced with following her original dream, or honoring the wish of the boy’s missing mother: that he not be returned to his father under any circumstances.

 

Ara Isilo has never been more content, healing from old wounds while watching her son thrive a continent away from his sire. But when a sinister figure from her past tracks her down, she’s torn from the people she loves most and forced to serve her old enemies: the insidious Thalia and the cruel entity Rai, whose plans force her to confront a truth she's been avoiding: that the husband she can’t bring herself to forgive may be her greatest ally in keeping the world from being consumed.