When Maugis d'Aygremont was a boy, his grandmother warned him about the Fae. The Fae, she said, were wicked creatures who lured men into the woods, never to be seen again. But as years passed, Maugis began to wonder if the warnings were just stories to scare unruly children. Until the autumn of 766, when he saw one of the Fae in the flesh. On the day that tore the House of Aygremont in two. Now, eleven years later, Maugis, the chief counselor to Charlemagne, is about to embark on a clandestine mission with three of Charlemagne's paladins. An expedition that may decide the fate of Christendom. But will the dark secrets Maugis learned of the Fae in his harrowing past come to haunt him in the present-and put the entire mission in jeopardy?