In a world where magic is restricted by trade, casting outside the spells deemed acceptable is punishable by death. Though these laws were enacted long ago, in the sky above there is a yearly reminder: an enormous Rift that threatens to burn the world and is only held back by the spells of the nobility and the king. But some do not agree that the magic is the problem. Krysilla wants far more than the exhausting life she lives as the wife of a baker who does as he pleases. Longing to cast spells she's never learned, and hiding the fact that she hasn't left behind the spells she swore never to touch again, she thinks all she has left is the knowledge that at least she has tried to be a good wife to her husband...until the day she helps a feverish, handsome minstrel who's collapsed by the side of the road. That one decision opens her to a world where nothing is as it seems, a world where everything she's been taught may be a lie, a world where she has to choose between the life she wants to live and the life that calls to her. And through it all she's pulled toward that handsome minstrel who tempts her in more ways than one.