With no magic talent of her own, Anne de Vernase must take on her
sister's magical legacy to unravel the secrets behind the dark sorcery
besieging the royal city of Merona-and to uncover the truth behind her
sister's death. For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic,
sorcery's decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination
of life's bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at
Sabria's last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship.
But when the king of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted
murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his
dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled. As the king's
new agente confide, Portier--much to his dismay--is partnered with the
popinjay Ilario de Sylvae, the laughingstock of Sabria's court. Then the
need to infiltrate a magical cabal leads Portier to Dante, a brooding,
brilliant young sorcerer whose heretical ideas and penchant for violence
threaten to expose the investigation before it's begun. But in an
ever-shifting landscape of murders, betrayals, old secrets, and unholy
sorcery, the three agentes will be forced to test the boundaries of
magic, nature, and the divine...
