Rielle Dardenne has been crowned Sun Queen, but the Gate holding the angels back is failing. Mending it means finding seven scattered saint relics before her enemies do. Ordered to spy on the angel Corien, she must weigh his promises of freedom and power against her loyalty to her prince and lover, Audric, and to the kingdom of Celdaria.
A thousand years later, Eliana Ferracora is learning what it means to be humanity's promised deliverer. Fear of turning out like Rielle keeps her own power dangerous and hard to control. Hunted by enemies who want that power for themselves, she races to save her dying friend Navi, weighing whether to use the gift she inherited or refuse it.
The two timelines run side by side, court intrigue and battlefield tension building toward the same reckoning. It asks what a queen owes the people who trust her, and what her power costs her. The book is fast paced young adult epic fantasy, dense with invented history and shadowed by betrayal on both sides of the centuries.
This is the middle volume of Claire Legrand's Empirium trilogy, arriving between Furyborn and Lightbringer.