When Elizabeth St John is asked by her father, King Vincent, to govern the duchy of Manusk, she knows she's not in for an easy time. It's a dark place ridden with corruption and thieves holding the honest people at ransom. What she doesn't expect is to find an unmanned trader tied up at the docks and ship-wreck survivors on the beach. To make matters worse, neither one are from the King's Heartland's duchies. Who is the young maiden the survivors are protecting? Why is the ship in the harbor and where are her sailors?  Elizabeth struggles to find answers to these questions as the threat of war with marauding, neighboring armies looms ever larger and her fate is left in the hands of the mysterious maiden.