Why would anyone try to kill a healer? Deenah's quiet life as an apprentice healer in the remote village of Brae's Creek is shattered when a stranger gravely wounds her master and flees into the wilds. For all her skills, Deenah is unable to identify the strange forces at work on the injury. To save her master's life, Deenah must join the youngest warder the north has ever known and his elderly companion, a veteran tracker of the Queen Wars. Together, they set out into hostile lands on a manhunt that is not what it seems.