A witch. A witch hunter. A love so deadly it could set the world on fire…

Rune Winters is on the run from the republic who condemned her and the boy who betrayed her. Her friends, her home, and the life she knew are lost.

An ocean away, her only ally is the unlikeliest one: Cressida Roseblood, the deposed witch queen intent on taking back what she thinks hers – the crown, the country, and Gideon Sharpe with it.

Gideon will not allow the terrors of his past to rise again, even if this means hunting down every last witch. But there is only one witch who holds the key to Cressida’s return…and Gideon’s heart.

And he will stop at nothing to find her. Rune Winters will meet her end. Even if it ends him too.

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.