Coren isn’t thrilled to have his war-hero father home again. He doesn’t aspire to a sweaty life on a sweaty horse tearing down the flags of neighboring nations, and he breaks too many of the rules governing his life as a mostly-grown son of a prominent elevati family in the Nareni Empire. But as long as his father doesn’t tally the long hours Coren spends studying magic and doesn’t figure out that he’s in love with the neighbor boy, Coren is pretty sure he can keep the peace until his father’s next deployment.

Instead, his father unexpectedly demands that he enlist in the imperial forces and assist in subduing human rebels resisting the empire’s conquest. Angry and unwilling to become a soldier, Coren runs away to become a mage, his destination a remote monastery whose name he only knows from a stolen letter. 

New elevati and human friends made along the perilous journey force Coren to question how much unrest in the empire arises from his own race’s callous governance rather than their human subjects. New enemies among the mages that Coren admires push him to kindle the flames of violence in himself and open his eyes to the role of mages in upholding the injustices of the empire. Disillusioned, Coren is ready to abandon his dream until a rebel attack leads his father to arrest his human friends. To save those friends, Coren must claim magical and political power that he fears will put him on the wrong side of history.