Winter. War. Chaos. As Elder turns against Elder and riders clash, Holt and Ash fight to protect the people of the Fae Forest as Thrall seeks to blight every creature within it. On the front lines their only real aid comes from Holt’s new lunar blade, and a dangerous new ally whose claws cut both ways.

In the west, Athra and Risalia have dragged Talia into war. She can’t bring peace without pain; told she can’t be a rider and a queen; torn beyond duty and her dream beyond the dream. There are no good options, not without becoming the monster her enemies claim her to be.

Rake and Osric have missions of their own, one to right their past, the other to confront it. Both will step out of the known world, to the Green Sea of the east and beyond the desert’s end; both hunted by new scourge of immense power and skill. Few will survive. The reckoning has come.