SYNOPSIS
The White Kingdom, a varied realm of humans, flanked on both sides by the kingdoms of the elves and fae, has always known that its single weakness is also its greatest strength: it's Lady. Kalvina is the Living Goddess of the White Kingdom, a tangible deity whose power has protected and nurtured the realm since the Creator moved on, leaving the world he'd craft in the hands of his immortal children.
Though the Lady rules with kind firmness (so say those who love her), there are factions who would see her expelled, those who consider her as a meddlesome obstacle on the true path that the realm should walk towards. Protected by her own power of foresight, Kalvina dwells in a glorious palace whose towers breech the clouds, and there her mortal soldiers pledge their lives to her service.
Greyan Xar'hail—half-elven, half human—is one of these soldiers. A major in the White League, outranked in his regiment only by his father, Greyan is more than happy to spend his life away from his native Ijmaviska. All Ijmaviska holds for the half-elf is a constricting life as a noblewoman's son, whereas in the human White Kingdom at his father's side, he may serve the Lady in peace, honouring too the elves' Living God—Kalvina's brother—with his gesture of alliance. For Greyan all is well.
Until, that is, news of an ancient god-slaying weapon reaches the keen ears of the White League; a weapon that could take their Lady from them and plunge the kingdom into chaos. More troubling still, whisper of this evil has drifted from the East, from the ever-peaceful lands of the secretive fae. And that's not all; tense rumours of a resurrected cult linger about the darker passages of the realm, rumours linked to a handful of bodies and talk of monstrous creatures that prowl the winter darkness.
With his father acting strangely, a shadow of himself, and the Lady under threat, Greyan has his hands full, let alone when he receives a letter he's been dreading for years: a summons back to Ijmaviska, for reasons undisclosed.
The colour of the White Kingdom is about to change as a darkness rolls in, a darkness that threatens to stain the realm blood-red.
