She remembered how it felt to lose Salma first to the wiles of the Butterfly-kinden girl then to hear the news of his death abandoned & alone in the midst of the enemy. She remembered how it felt to see her father hacked to death before her eyes. But of her murder of Achaeos of the bite of her blade into his unsuspecting flesh the wound that had sapped him & ruined him until he died she remembered nothing felt nothing. In such a vacuum how could she possibly atone? Tynisa is running but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal her past will at last catch up with her. Her father's ghost is hunting her down. At the same time the Wasp Empress Seda is on the move her eyes on the city of Khanaphes the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst her soldiers seek only conquest she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history & has her eyes on a far greater prize.