Does Survival Favor Strength or Cunning?
After helping win the war against the King-priest of Chelpa, Saffron min Furasi is free to chase other ambitions. Travelling west, she hopes to learn more about the fire-magic burning within her under the tutelage of the renowned Shaper, Cauzel Blackfeather. While investigating abductions along the Ifelian Corridor at his behest, she befriends an intriguing eladrin exile, Be'naj, who confoundingly appears to also be half Aasimar.
Sorting through her unexpected attraction to the otherworldly woman, Saffron falls prey to the same forces that have been taking prisoners along the forest road for months, and is sold to a ruthless merchant-lord in distant Zeblon. Forced to fight for survival as a gladiator and earning new enemies at seemingly every turn, she'll need all her strength and cunning to navigate the city's politics, forge the right alliances, and escape bondage, so she can reunite with Be'naj and her mentor.
Yet Saffron has a role to play in schemes beyond her imagining. A cult, known as 'The Name of the Beast,' conspires with an undead necromancer and a power-hungry sorceress with designs on dragonhood, toward a plan that will bring the world as Saffron knows it to the edge of ruin. Her Living Fire pendant, gained from the vanquished King-priest, is but the first piece of a puzzle that must be solved if she and her allies are to thwart the Name of the Beast.