After losing her mother and fiance, Alcinia and her father travel west to Turin in the Duchy of Savoy to begin a new life. Getting adjusted to a new way of living in Renaissance Italy, Alcinia falls in love with a mysterious bard, and through their secret rendezvous is beginning to find happiness once again. Until...she finds out that her small-town father isn't who she thought he was. Alcinia gets caught in a web of intrigue, and sets out to save her father from a scientific organization bent on using a biological weapon to destroy all men of the cloth. Her father's life might be the only way to stop it... When she discovers the truth, it will change her life forever, for better and for worse."