The Astraean Empire ended famine, cured disease, and gave its citizens two hundred years of life.
Akari Hara has devoted her life to Princess Estelle since they were both just five years old.
But Akari is the Daughter of Rhea - a direct descendant of the Mad Queen who destroyed her own country and starved the continent. And just like her mother before her, Akari will die before she is thirty, while Estelle will go on living another century without her.
Every morning and every evening, Akari takes a compound her physician tells her will keep her stable for as long as possible.
Yasu Kharona planned to die. After fourteen years apart, he goes to the palace for one last look, to know she's okay.
But Akari isn't okay. And when he sees her, he changes his mind.
Within a day, the drug is out of her blood and a city district has rotted to the ground.
The medicine was never treatment. It was control, and the Empire has been doing this to her family for a thousand years.
Akari doesn't want revenge. She wants a quiet life with the people she loves.
And that's the one thing the Empire can never allow.