Zuhra has never known anything but life in the citadel. Her mother forbids her to enter secret rooms or read books in the abandoned library. Images of magical beings with glowing blue eyes, riding flying gryphons in pursuit of long-gone monsters line the citadel walls. Most mysterious of all is Zuhra’s younger sister, Inara, whose eyes glow like those in the paintings and who silently tends their garden in between her rare moments of lucidity. Something happened the night Inara was born that caused their father to leave, their mother to withdraw into herself and a poisonous, sentient hedge to grow around the edges of the citadel, keeping the family in and strangers out.
When the hedge permits a young scholar seeking to know more about the magical blue-eyed Paladins to enter, Zuhra sees a chance to escape. Intrigued by Halvor—the only boy she’s ever met—Zuhra sneaks out of her bedroom one night to explore the forbidden part of her home. Inara is curious too, and together the three explorers unlock secrets that will change their lives forever. As romances bloom, family history is revealed, political intrigue mounts and vicious monsters are poised to attack, will the sisters’ love for one another be enough to draw them home?
Writing in the tradition of folktales like Rapunzel, contemporary fantasy authors like Laini Taylor and classic worlds like Anne McCaffrey’s Pern and Piers Anthony’s Xanth, Sara B. Larson weaves a Gothic tale of sisters emerging from shadow into light.
