In the cruel final winter of Bronze Age Mycenae, an untouchable outlaw returns home to bury the bodies of his three brothers, whom he murdered decades before. But the sole survivor of the slaughter, two implacable kings, two women who understand men far too well, and even the Great Serpent of Delphi herself have their own designs for him. Caught in this crucible of warring forces, the outlaw must reassess not just his own life, but reality itself.

“When you hear twittering,” Akhaïdes Outlaw says, “think of birds.” He holds a precarious place in Nafpaktos. He is a pariah, but his work is crucial to the Herakleids’ success. Though he craves anonymity and escape, he can’t abandon the brother who loathes but needs him, nor the king who cannot control him, yet won’t let him go. Then hunters are taken by their prey, a woman's reckless passion could end a dynasty, and only the outlaw can piece together the peril no one else sees. He might save those he loves, but at a terrible cost. And the king has a brutal solution of his own

An old hero walks willingly into exile. A feral child learns compassion and brutality in equal measure. A woman is unmarriageable until one even stranger than she appears from beyond her world. A hideous sacrifice drives a young murderer ten thousand miles from his homeland; hubris drives him back again. And the Greek outlaw Akhaïdes endures life without relief or reparation—until servitude, humility, and two inconceivable monsters offer answers that he could never have imagined.

In Mycenae, the former outlaw known as Akhaïdes finds himself again in the center of a whirlwind of plotting and wrangling for power. When the king’s most trusted allies prove to be the most treacherous and love cannot guarantee survival, only Akhaïdes has the knowledge, the persistence, and the cold precision needed to draw seemingly unrelated threads into explicable patterns. Then he must act with no regard for kindness or what others would consider fairness, let alone his own desires. He must set into motion a war that pits against each other the people he loves most, and if that will destroy him, so be it.