What will happen when the assassins are defeated... For Tess Birdsong and her companions there will be no warm homecoming. The death of one evil exposed the beating, seething heart of another far more dangerous power. Together they must go to Anahar, to help free the Anari people from their enslavers, and purge the darkness in their own hearts. But that ancient city holds more than the key to Anari liberation. In its temple lie the secrets of the Ilduin, women of almost godlike power. Tess, who remembers nothing of her past, is terrified by the power of Ilduin blood. But Tess' mind conceals more than fear. There is war, and pain, and death, and anguished grief. And somehow she must face it all again, guided only by the shocking secrets of a temple as old as time itself...