When seventeen year old Ethelyn Jaslove stumbles through a rosebush into Lilia Valley, she finds herself engaged in a battle of wits with Queen Orenda: the half-human, half-sorceress who wants to enslave Ethelyn as an elfakit - one of her soulless servants. Ethelyn must fight to keep her soul intact and stay alive for the sake of her widowed mother and the folk of the valley. Ethelyn has always struggled to fit in at Sunnyside High in New Jersey, but she finds a sense of purpose in Lilia Valley when she learns that a seer has predicted that there will be a war - with a human girl at the center of it. The folk of the valley are depending on Ethelyn to save their land from the grips of Queen Orenda. To make matters worse, Ethelyn learns of a secret and is sworn not to tell; it would mean the death of her beloved Lyric - elfakit of Orenda's. Only, the secret could save the land. When she manages a way around it and outwits Orenda by uncovering the secret and providing a voice for the woman who was truly meant to be queen, she is given an opportunity far too unreal for a teenager to imagine.