Tired of fish guts and bawdy sailors, Anna, an aspiring artist, makes for the City of Light. There, with the help of her contentious Aunt, a Baroness whose disfavour with the ruling class has seen her reduced to the proprietor of an obscure hotel buried deep within a forgotten part of the city, she hopes to find tutorage under the famed albeit peculiar Mr Belle, an artist of much renown. But the city, perched high up on its craggy cliffs, surrounded by stormy seas, is a place of light no longer, shrouded instead in icy mists and dark subterfuge.

Beneath its towering spires, a secret rebellion wages war against the ruling families while Maluki, the ruthless head of the secret police, crushes dissent through fear and forbidden magic. Obsessed with destroying the Baroness, Maluki seeks a journal once belonging to her father, rumoured to contain heretical knowledge capable of reshaping the city's future.

Anna soon finds herself immersed in this bitter conflict as an unknown past arrives to twist her fate, and forms unlikely friendships with the city's outcasts: Raf, a fallen newspaper editor desperate to restore his reputation, and Max, a young pickpocket whose courage and kindness quickly earn more than just her trust. But when Max disappears under mysterious circumstances, Anna's search for him uncovers secrets tied to her own cryptic past and to forces far older and more sinister than she could have imagined.

As discord spreads through the city, Anna becomes a reluctant herald of change, and must challenge those determined to smother her dreams. In a world consumed by greed, cruelty, and fear, she must discover whether an artist can light the way and save the lost soul of a doomed city. She must face her fears, come to terms with a past that doesn't belong to her, and confront the powers that would see all within made into slaves...