Karina didn’t set out to free the Seelie Queen’s gallowglass. Now she’ll do anything to keep him. After Karina and her brother, Chris’s, lives fall apart in separate yet equally spectacular ways, they leave New York behind and head to the UK. Karina buries herself in research for her doctoral thesis, all the while studiously not thinking about the man who broke her heart, while Chris—who’d been a best-selling author before his ex-fiancée sued him for plagiarism—drinks his way across the British Isles. In Scotland, they visit the grave of Robert Kirk, a seventeenth- century minister who was kidnapped by fairies. No one is more shocked than Karina when a handsome man with a Scottish brogue appears, claiming to be the Robert Kirk of legend. What’s more, he says he spent the last few hundred years as the Gallowglass, the Seelie Queen’s personal assassin. When they’re attacked by demons, Karina understands how dearly the queen wants him back. As Karina and Robert grow closer, Chris’s attempts to drown his sorrows lead him to a pub, and a woman called Sorcha. Chris is instantly smitten with her, so much so he spends days with Sorcha and lies to his sister about his whereabouts. When Chris comes home covered in fey kisses, Karina realizes that the Seelie Queen isn’t just after Robert. Can Karina outsmart the Seelie Queen, or is Robert doomed to forever be the Gallowglass?

Who is hunting the gallowglass? When Karina and Robert relocated from Scotland to New York, they expected things to settle down. New York is known for many things, but a hotbed of supernatural occurrences isn’t one of them. Karina returned to her life as a graduate student, and agreed to teach a class over winter break. That was when things got weird: first she and Robert encountered an angry centaur, then a fairy enrolled in her class, and Karina learned that her mentor just might be a deity. When the Seelie King started making unannounced visits to Karina’s apartment in the middle of the night and warning her and Robert to be careful, she knew things were serious. All of these events led to a single question: Who doesn’t want the gallowglass on American soil? Meanwhile, Chris has problems of his own. The university grudgingly restored his teaching position, his agent and publisher are hounding him for a sequel to his worldwide bestseller… and he wonders if he can teach again. Write again. Hell, he can barely even speak to a woman after what happened between him and the Seelie Queen. Then a woman—a fairy woman—comes into Chris’s life, and damn it all if he doesn’t want her to stay there. The god plays their hand, and the Seelie King calls Robert to his side. Alone and more frightened than she’s ever been, Karina tries to solve the mystery of who is hunting the gallowglass. Will Karina find the answer in time, or will Robert be lost forever?

Who wields the power behind the Wild Court? After months of dealing with gods and monsters in New York, Karina and Robert return to their cottage in Scotland. Chris makes the move as well to start fresh with his girlfriend, Anya—but when they arrive Anya isn’t there. He tracks her down at the pub where her mother, Beira, works, and finds out that Beria’s been holding a grudge against his family for the past few hundred years. Since Beira’s the Cailleach Bheur—the Celtic Queen of Winter—her grudges are a rather big deal. While Chris deals with Beira, Karina and Robert learn that when Robert was freed from the Minster’s Pine Karina inadvertently left a portal to Elphame open. Now Doon Hill is covered in fairies who are organizing themselves into a new court free of Seelie rule, akin to the Wild Fae of old. What’s worse, Karina’s long-lost uncle appears to be organizing this new court. Karina closes the door to Elphame, but that only angers the unseen powers behind the fledgling Wild Court, forcing her and Robert to forge alliances with those who’d been their enemies not so long ago. Who can Karina and her gallowglass trust, and who is only out to deceive them?