Rebecca St. Claire – författare

While returning to Florescia for her coronation as Sezara Vandiamante of the Midnight Court, itinerant monster hunter Gwynarra Caoilfhionn receives a request from the director of the Society for Afterlife and Arcane Research. A series of deadly hauntings by infernal entities and violent ghosts have plagued the citizens of the Atharian Empire, and the Society requests Gwynarra lend her skills in the defense of the innocent.

But Gwynarra Caoilfhionn was not the only hunter the Society hired. The director also requested the aid of Caspar Richter, Grand Master of the Holy Order of St. Arnulf Ironhand, an order of witch, heretic, vampire, and traitor hunters for the Blessed Emperor of the Atharian Empire. Grand Master Richter sent his daughter Karina as a representative of the empire''s noble defenders who, twenty-one years earlier, executed Gwynarra''s parents for allegedly harboring Marius Bedwyr, leader of the vampire insurgents the Crimson Fangs.

When Gwyn and Karina investigate the violent haunting at St. Hiltegardt the Open-Armed Orphanage, they uncover a mechanomagical device designed to transform suffering and fear into powerful arcane energies. As more of these devices emerge, they begin to suspect they have found themselves in the middle of a war fought in the shadows that may soon explode into the light.

Heavier is the head denied its crown...

Marius Bedwyr and his Crimson Fangs have enslaved treasure hunter Courage Faern''doln, forcing him to build human-machine abominations designed to crush enemies of the Atharian Empire. Hidden in a secret facility known to only the Blessed Emperor and his High Holy Council, Courage toils in fire, shadow, and darkness.

Gwynarra Vandiamante, outed as the last of a family of vampires hated by the Richter family, has fled to the Zyntarian Isles where the Sythrokli Oracle''s riddle provides cryptic clues as to Courage''s location, but it cannot see where Karina walks.

Karina Richter, cast out from her father''s house due to Marius'' deception and hints of her complicated feelings for Gwynarra, hunts alone in Czarnenburg''s disease-ridden slums. The tripartite death goddesses to whom Courage owes a service, the Corvidiae, have other plans for the lone huntress.

While Gwyn makes her final stop before returning to Florescia for her coronation, Courage''s older sister, Honor, receives her own cryptic message from the Corvidiae, who demand reuniting the White Queen with the Black Knight against the Crimson King. Along with the technomagus turned baker Xrissa Kosol, she sets out to find her brother and these enigmatic players.

But all is not well in the Empire. As Marius becomes closer to the Blessed Emperor, his Crimson Fangs doubt his devotion to freeing their homeland of Froam from Atharian rule. Does Marius truly desire to sit on his fathers throne, or do his ambitions and vengeance lie elsewhere? And what do his ambitions hold in store for Gwynarra, Karina, Courage, and the citizens of the empire who grow wary the empire''s new direction?