The theocracy that rules the Nessium empire is threatened by rebellion. Or it was, until five years ago when a mystical Barrier fell around the empire’s southernmost kingdom of Rittir, penning the Heretic and his gathering army inside. Nessium’s own army has been camped around the kingdom’s borders, attempting to figure out a way to lift the impenetrable Barrier and lend aid to Rittir’s faithful while keeping the empire’s most dangerous enemy contained.
Chessa, an officer’s wife, has always tried to live according to the Directives. Piety has never come naturally to her, though, and her will to comply crumbles with the realization that her husband never loved her. After an impulsive decision to uproot her life, she loses her way in a storm and, impossibly, washes up on a riverbank in Rittir.
Now Chessa is caught in the middle of a brewing civil war. She has found a friend in Prince Khaeloth, a son of the emperor, who is similarly trapped in his uncle’s court, yearning for home. He shares her faith, and his kindness is an unexpected lifeline. But what is friendship compared to the Heretic’s offer to free her from the magical binds of her marriage oath once Rittir is free of the Barrier?
With centuries of peace at risk of collapse, Chessa must choose a side. Loyalties stretch and tensions rise in the kingdom cut off from the rest of the world, but nothing is simple when truth contradicts power and corruption has always been the root of control.
