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Kirra Danalustrous is the daughter of a marlord, a celebrated beauty--and a shapeshifter with magic in her veins. After a disastrous affair with a married man, she has fled to the edge of the kingdom, to a small fishing village that has become a refuge for children dying from the invariably fatal red-horse fever. Yet Kirra has discovered a radical cure. She can transform the patients into animals who can take a medicine that's poisonous to humans. But so many people in Gillengaria fear and distrust magic. How many parents will allow Kirra to save their children? And if Kirra saves enough of them, will she be able to heal her own broken heart?

Donnal is a peasant's son who has been Kirra's protector and companion for years. Although he's always loved her, he's always known she was destined to marry some titled lord and take her place in society. After watching her fall in love with another man, he has tried--and failed--to leave her. A shapeshifter himself, he has accompanied her to Dorrin Isle, determined not to take his human form again because he finds it too painful to be around the woman he knows he cannot have.

But Kirra needs him. So do the dying patients. And if he's going to help any of them, he has to have the shape--and the heart--of a man.

Gillengaria seethes with unrest. In the south, hostility toward magic and its users has risen to a dangerous level, though King Baryn has ordered that such mystics are to be tolerated. It is whispered that he issued the decree because his new wife used her magic powers to ensnare him...

The King knows there are those in the noble Twelve Houses who could use this growing dissent to overthrow him. So he dispatches the mystic Senneth to assess the threat throughout the realm. Accompanying her is a motley band of magic-users and warriors including Tayse, first among the King's Riders--who holds a hard view of mystics in general, and Senneth in particular.

But as the unlikely allies venture farther into the south, they will face death in a land under the sway of a fanatical cult that would purge Gillengaria of all magic users. And they will come to realize that their only hope of survival lies in standing together...

The first book of The Twelve Houses, Mystic and Rider, introduced readers to the troubled land of Gillengaria. Now, Sharon Shinn continues her epic tale, as a beautiful shapeshifter finds that intrigue and danger can be found even in the safest of havens...

After joining an unlikely band of soldiers and sorcerers to rescue the kidnapped regent Romar Brendan, the shiftling Kirra returns home to learn that her half-sister, Casserah, has been proclaimed heir to the land. But when Casserah refuses to go on a social tour of great Houses, Kirra shifts into her sister's form and makes the rounds-during which she unexpectedly meets up with her compatriots from her previous adventures. The motley group faces many dangers- and Kirra places herself in peril when she falls in love with the married Lord Romar. Revealing her true identity to him, Kirra begins a tempestuous affair that places them both in mortal danger, and leads them both into the stronghold of the devious lords of the Thirteenth House.

In this story of hidden magic and forbidden love, the King's Rider Justin befriends Ellynor, a young novice at a convent-only to discover that she is a mystic being manipulated by the fanatical Daughters of the Pale Moon into hunting down and killing other mystics.

In this novel of secret sorceries and forbidden desires, the mystic Cammon must put aside his personal feelings for Princess Amalie while he reads the souls of her suitors for any potential threats. But Cammon is unable to read Amalie, and he begins to suspect that she herself possesses magic powers-a revelation which would put her life in danger, and throw the kingdom into chaos.

Plagued by guilt for failing to protect her king, Rider Wren has fled the city of Gilengaria and given herself the penance of a life of wandering, helping strangers in need. But when chance brings her to the great estate known as Fortune, Wren will find her fate, and finally confront the ghosts of her past.