“They say this land is bound, cursed since the beginning of the world. And it’ll be freed one day by a man with war-torn hands.” Rosamund Lacey has crossed a continent to marry Archer Scott because she believes he is a man set apart—a man with a destiny. But Alexander Mortimer, Outlaw King of the western territory, believes in only one kind of destiny: winner takes all. Determined to reign supreme, Mortimer kidnaps the governor’s bride and wreaks havoc on the land around Glory Mesa. But when Archer refuses to choose between the woman he loves and the land he has sworn to protect, he is forced into a showdown that may cost more than his life.

"It’s not until you tame the wild places that the monsters come out.” New hope brings new challenges and new blood from the East. With Archer and Rosamund Scott presiding over the land they love and Raymond Lacey serving as marshal, Glory Mesa is poised to enter a new golden age. But the hard-won peace is marred by rumblings of trouble on the horizon and the shadow of the ancient curse. From Jesse Thatcher’s run-in with a grizzled mountain man to Kate Carnegie’s quest to bring justice to a pair of hapless brothers, the Western Territory becomes a stage for desperate deeds and unlikely heroes. Yet, unknown to all but a few, this season of range wars, breakneck rides, lone gunslingers, and gentle romances is building to a deadly day that will alter the territory and its people forever.

"When we are gone, these darkened fields that have held so much sorrow—they will be remembered as glorious." With Maria Pike unmasked at last and an ancient terror awakened to ravage the land, Archer's heroes set out on a quest that will ask more of them than they know. Strength, sacrifice, and unheard-of feats of courage are required if they are to break the curse that threatens the land they love. Yet as friendships are broken and allies topple one by one, the men and women of the Western a Territory begin to realize that the greatest threat of all lies not in the curse, but in themselves.