When Coral's people are massacred and their island razed to ash, Coral is smuggled out and raised in the shadow of the government that killed his family. Now hiding his identity, his magic, and his banned faith, he has one mission: find out if anyone else survived. To do it, he needs a necromancer willing to risk everything.
Valen has spent years turning grief into something useful -- healing the bereaved, avoiding the government's draft, and keeping his distance from anything that could pull him back into the world of the living. Then Coral shows up on his doorstep. And keeps showing up. Until Valen runs out of reasons to turn him away.
Talon walks a tightrope between loyalty to a government he is beginning to distrust and the moral clarity he finds in the people it calls enemies -- complicated further by General Cyrus, who is principled, older, and far more politically calculating than he appears. Unfortunately, he is also stunning and Talon's leader.
Can hope survive a world dedicated to destroying? Can love endure the deepest of pains?
