Briel Xandran is the daughter of an oracle, a defiant princess exiled and presumed dead five years earlier. Returning to the island of Akros to lead her father’s funeral rites—desperate to hide the scars on her back and the price on her head—Briel becomes enmeshed in the violent struggle for control of her family’s port-city. With her brother’s life hanging in the balance, she is forced to swear loyalty to the enigmatic mercenary captain who now rules in Akros.

But Briel knows that the real dangers in her corrupt, cosmopolitan port-city aren’t mortal, but divine: Akros lies at the heart of a divine feud that began a generation earlier, and the city and its ruling families are merely playthings to the charming, jealous, lustful gods. Soon Briel’s return to her childhood home—and her intense, reluctant attraction to the new lord of Akros—begins to soften her heart, threatening her ability to evade the manipulations of the gods and protect the secrets of her fugitive past...