A guild slave in a city of mages, Lysium dances on a magical stage while stars drift from her hair and whisper secret persuasions into the minds of her audience. Every evening she chronicles her memories, for every night comes a shadow who steals them away.
She lives each day dancing in the arms of the handsome, aloof husband the guild has given her to while their best friend, a fireseller and a slave as they are, has shorn his hair in a sorrow he refuses to speak of.
Until the day the guildmaster makes Lysium the crowning pawn in his vengeance.
But even greater danger lurks in the background. The enchanted protections on the city walls are weakening, and no one cares, thinking that the enemies the walls were erected to keep out are nothing but myth.
The shadow-hungry are real, though, and they are preparing for battle.
Now only one sorceress holds up the walls, Essence, but her own loneliness traps her in the web of a mysterious mage whose intentions are shrouded in secrecy, a man who brings her the one thing she cannot resist: love.
Three women and one spirit fight in a world where the battle lines are drawn in the wrong places, unions are made with the wrong allies, and when the enemy strikes...
Not one is prepared.
Can be read as a stand-alone novel!
