Ailsbet is daughter of the cruel and powerful King Haikor of Rurik. He rules with an iron fist, stealing the male “taweyr” from his lords as a tax. But he despises the neweyr and since his wife died, has done nothing to keep the land fertile. When Ailsbet shows no neweyr, everyone considers her unweyr, without any magic. Her brother Edik is the only hope of a proper heir to their father’s taweyr, but when he is asked to prove his magic, Ailsbet realizes she is the one helping him again. She isn’t unweyr, after all, but ekhono—she has the wrong magic—and if she is discovered, she will be burned. Marlissa (Issa) is the daughter of King Jaap of Weirland, the smaller and more northern of the two islands of the weyr. She comes into her neweyr properly and when her father asks her permission to agree to a betrothal to young Prince Edik of Rurik, she agrees for the sake of the two kingdoms. When she goes to meet Edik, however, she finds that he is a selfish boy and she falls hopelessly in love instead with Duke Kellin, a man who is working behind the scenes against King Haikor, and who is betrothed to Ailsbet, a woman who should be her enemy but as they spend more time together, seems instead to be the one person in Rurik who can truly understand how Issa feels.