A cold-blooded killer lusts for others’ magic. A drug-addicted detective vows to thwart him. Dragged into a dangerous homicide investigation, Andrin Sethuel alone stands between the killer’s murderous desires and his future victims’ salvation, a kingdom’s freedom and its enslavement. Andrin has survived a childhood that should have destroyed him. Slavers brutally murdered his parents in front of him, ripped him away from everything he knew, and addicted him to drugs. The aftermath leaves him warring against hostility, prejudice, and suspicion on every front. And it leaves him entrenched in self-loathing. Yet despite the odds, he becomes head of the Torvian kingdom’s criminal investigative forces. Andrin speculates that the killer scythes magic from his victims to reap power and augment his burgeoning might, but such a capability is unthinkable. And wielding spells without a catalyst should be impossible. Yet irrefutably, the killer is wrenching his victims’ craft away with his own unimaginable sorcery, growing more powerful and treacherous with each successive murder. While Andrin struggles to expose the murderer and his search for the killer turns into a fight for his life, lies and duplicity threaten to rip his only friend from him—and she’s keeping a secret that could be the key to solving the murders. Andrin is forced to choose between his friend and his duty, and ultimately between his king and a betrayal that will save his country from a ruthless conqueror’s invasion.

The Aluian Killer continues to terrorize Torvia unopposed. Intent on conquest and unaware that his army harbors a Torvian spy, the Mistrin emperor invades the city with the blessing of its mad king and all but conquers it by law and edict. But when the king agrees to a tribute of Torvians to the Mistrin Empire, Prince Danielen knows the time has come for him to overthrow his father—and the draldur bardelains decide the time has come to kill the prince and Andrin Sethuel. As the astromancers search for the weapon that will crush their hated enemy, the Torvian resistance strikes against the emperor. War breaks out, pitting Torvians against Mistrins and one another and ripping loyalties apart. And Andrin’s fate and the creature Rift’s intertwine, hurtling Andrin toward a destiny that could destroy him.

Cloelle Banderal begs the lord of the Ancient City to resurrect her grandfather, but instead the Maleficus holds her captive and steals her memory. Andrin Sethuel, now royal wizard, discovers that he cannot free her despite his newfound puissance. Magic is failing because of the necromancer’s necrotic influence, and Andrin must use the Rondural to go back in time in a bid to save Torvia. Consequently, an unlikely alliance is born, its goal the destruction of the necromancer. Although the sorceress is bound by astromantic enchantment, her necromancy, enhanced by the spirits of the dead she harbors and commands, confers on her the power to kill all those who bear an aluian—and this darkling magic gives her the might to bring the kingdom of Carvel to an end.