To get out alive, Aelya has to go from prime suspect to lead investigator. When Aelya woke up this morning, she thought she was going to pick up the score of blackmarket yura her gang needed to escape the streets. Instead she finds her dealer dead and herself arrested as prime suspect. To save herself she'll not only have to figure out who did it, but convince the Councilate investigator holding her chains he can trust her enough to get the job done. A novella set in the Empire of Resonance universe, twelve months before the start of Beggar's Rebellion.

The Councilate controls everything except the truth. I have nothing save my discovery—but with this shall I destroy an empire. Tai Kulga lost the rebellion and his best friend on the same day, stripping him of his will to live even as a strange power flooded his bones. When the friend returns as a spirit guide, it feels like a second chance—but his friend is not who he was, and the Councilate is not done oppressing his people. When trouble with lawkeepers lands Tai’s surviving friends in a prison camp, he must go underground to find the last of the rebels and convince them to break his friends free. Along the way he meets Ellumia Aygla, runaway Councilate daughter posing as an accountant to escape her family and the avarice of the capital. Curious about the link between spirit guides and magic, her insights earn her a place among the rebels, and along with Tai’s power help turn the tide against the colonialists. But as the rebels begin to repeat the Councilate’s mistakes, Tai and Ellumia must confront their own pasts and prejudices, before the brewing war turns them into the monsters they fight.

Our secrets stopped an unstoppable empire. But did they awaken something much worse? Against all odds the rebels have defeated the Councilate, combining Ella’s insight into magic with Tai’s resonant strength. But barely a month into independence, smugglers begin to report strange bodies in the woods—scarred, mutilated, shunned by the forest creatures. Still, they have more pressing concerns: racial tensions in the city, peace talks with the empire, and finding food for the approaching winter. Until one of the bodies turns up alive, and flooded with unbelievable power. Turns out some secrets bring new dangers with them. And the Councilate may be the least of their worries.

A god is dead. In her place, a thousand petty gods spring up, seizing the power Tai refused. Now he must join a centuries-old shaman, a bawdy tribesman, and a teenager who hates him in a desperate race to reclaim that god's power, before the new gods and old destroy everything they love.