The journey back to Eleutheria is a quiet one for Tara, but the silence is deafening as her heart screams in agony. The man she was starting to think she could build a future with has inexplicably pushed her away, leaving a void where warmth once was. Cayden had begun to feel like home-had finally started to open his heart. But back in the familiar smithy, she finds him a stranger, a ghost of the man she knew. Consumed by his forge, Cayden works with a furious, desperate energy that threatens to shatter him completely. Each night he seeks fleeting energy from others-their sounds a fresh torment for Tara-but the light in his eyes only dims, and the spicy citrus scent she adores sours with exhaustion. As preparations for Prince Christoph's wedding fill the city with excitement, Tara is trapped in the quiet torment of watching Cayden work himself to the bone. But her resolve is as strong as the steel in his forge and she refuses to leave him to his demons. While she tends to the smithy, cleaning up the chaos he leaves in his self-destructive wake, she finds herself navigating the complex web of his past and the loyalties that bind his family. Can a dance of fire and flame rekindle what was lost, or will the haunting weight of Cayden's past finally extinguish their future for good?