"For every new loss you suffer, another layer of fear is stripped away, until there is nothing left." After the disastrous ceremony chaining their souls to the service of their lords, the newly grafted Royal Thorns have nothing left to fear. The King of Night enslaved Alaan to break him, but the pirate is determined to show the tyrant that chains cannot tame the ocean. There can be no compromise. Alaan will die before he abandons the blood debt the king owes his people. Izak gambled everything on his brother escaping the evil corruption that plagues their family, but as the new Commander of the Crown Prince's Thorns, he sees just how deep their father's blood runs. It quickly becomes clear that when Etian rises to the throne, he will be every bit as cold and ruthless a ruler as the man whose boot they grew up beneath. Worse, Izak realizes his own shining dreams of becoming an honorable warrior were just that-dreams. His reality leads down a path much darker and splattered with blood. Left for dead, Lathe awakens as a prisoner of the enemy. For the crimes committed by her homeland, her captors want to put Lathe in the grave for good. But they didn't figure on running up against the baddest medicine ever to come out of the Kingdom of Night. No one escapes the Thorns unscathed...