Fourteen years ago Serianna, younger sister to the King's Champion, Tomas, was supposed to marry the newly crowned King Evard. Instead, she married Karon, a humble antiquities dealer. Except that Karon was secretly a survivor of Avonar, a land whose people were all but exterminated for sorcery. In Leire, sorcerers are regarded as devils, and were Karon's ability to heal ever discovered, he would, at the least, be executed. Several years later, Tomas and his lieutenant, Darzid, discover Karon's nature and reveal him to the king, with Tomas using his influence to protect Seri, believing that she had been controlled by Karon. After months of torture, Karon is executed as a sorcerer, and when Seri gives birth to their son shortly after, he, too, is killed.
With nothing left but her hatred, Seri flees her brother and lives as a peasant, refusing the shelter he offers, returning to the capital only once a year under the eye of Rowan Graeme, the local sheriff, to pay her "penance" to the king. Ten years later, she encounters a mad, violent, amnesiac young man in the woods near her home. When she learns that he's being hunted by Darzid, she gives him shelter out of spite, naming him Aeren. Soon, a man of Karon's people learns of Aeren and tells her that Aeren is actually D'Nathiel, a prince, and one who must travel to the bridge of D'Arnath, a word Karon shouted into her mind as he died. Seri wants nothing to do with either man, but can't let the connection to Karon slide.
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