Countess Erzsébet Báthory tortured and killed hundreds of peasant girls over decades. No one cared. Then, she came for the daughters of the rich. But it was too late. For as the old saying goes: The thunderbolt does not strike into nettle. Lady Astrid Rimensberger, a headstrong daughter of the lower Silesian nobility, travels to Hungary to retrieve her sister, who has mysteriously ceased all communication with her family after being chosen to attend a conservatory for young ladies headed by that region's notorious countess, Erzébet Báthory. After being turned away at the castle gates and failed by the Hungarian palatine, Astrid realizes she has no choice but to shed her privileged status and enter the castle in the guise of a servant to continue her search. Once she is granted entry, Astrid must maneuver for position within the unfamiliar hierarchy inside the castle while simultaneously attempting to peel away the increasingly disquieting layers of her new mistress's closely guarded secrets. Lady Astrid will have to cross the steely societal boundaries of class, religion, and gender, as well as traverse her own dark inner terrain, to save not only herself, but the souls of all those the countess and the sorceress she employs have sacrificed in service to their perverse legacy.
