For seven centuries, the six races of Vaelthyr have survived behind living walls of blood, thorn, moonstone, ironroot, starlight, and fire.
The walls were called mercy.
They were prisons.
When a vampire hunting party crosses illegally into the fairy realm, dawn leaves one fairy prince dead, one sacred grove butchered, and one vampire heir chained at a human gate with blood on his mouth and an hour missing from his mind.
Auren Talspar, heir to the human war command, is ordered to break him.
Prince Liozhar Nocten, elegant, starving, and guilty of everything except murder, refuses to confess to a crime that would ignite the world.
Then a fairy curse hidden in Liozhar’s blood drags them both into the dead prince’s final memory. Auren sees human flame at the murder scene.
His own realm was there first.
Now captor and prisoner must hunt the truth through courts, war camps, poisoned forests, and bleeding walls. But their bond awakens something older than law.
A child.
A throne.
And a choice no kingdom should own.
