"What is the cost of life?" Olun will do anything to end the plague killing off her clan, including sacrificing herself to the Dark Lady of Death. This, she believes, is the answer to the question posed by the Elder of her clan and the purpose of her short life-until she's stolen away to the mountains where she is to become Elder of the Ithoumi village. But this new chance at life comes at a cost and Olun is determined to prove that they've made a mistake. There is absolutely nothing special about her. Yet, when dormant abilities awaken and her long-suffered nightmares become reality, Olun turns to the one person she fears more than fate . . . Didan, the former Elder of the Ithoumi village, now reduced to a muttering, disfigured pariah, sets his sights on Olun. With their pasts linked by pain and their present blossoming into something more frightening, Olun discovers a new answer to the question of Life and Death-one that will set both her and Didan on a path of no return.