Legions require leaders, and highborn sons and daughters make ideal candidates. But the Cyrenian Empire has already taken one son from Osric Alexander, and he will not yield another.
Risking their lives and fortunes, the houses of Alexander rebel against an empire that can burn across their lands like a wildfire. After an attempt on Osric’s life, his brother seeks revenge against whoever gave the order. And while he suspects Cyrenia, it may just as well have been a sworn sword, a mysterious desert prince, or a company of sellswords with a grudge as old as the empire itself.
Meanwhile, at the edge of the world, Valar Alexander rides with an imperial host against a foe that slips unseen across the steppes. Fell upon and left for dead, he must journey across a hostile landscape, through the ghostly ruins of an abandoned holdfast, and face a foe more grisly than any fiend of old, to reach a refuge that may prove to be little more than myth.
And against his father’s wishes, Ofri Alexander is sellswording up and down the Colored Coast. With his companions, he repels fleets of fjordborn raiders, encounters a runesooth who claims to speak to the wind, and uncovers an opportunity that could unite two ancient houses, delivering their lands from enemies old and new that marshal at the gates.