Alissa doesn’t believe in magic. Her father’s stories about the Hold, a legendary fortress where human Keepers learn magic from the enigmatic Masters, are just that—stories. But her mother insists Alissa has inherited her father’s magical ability, so she must go to the Hold to be trained. On her way, she crosses paths with Strell, a wandering musician from the plains. Though Alissa is not sure she can trust a plainsman, Strell has something Alissa needs—one of her father’s old maps. Traveling together, they can reach the Hold before the snow sets in. But they don’t know that the Hold is nearly empty. The Keeper Bailic has sent the Masters on a fool’s errand and systematically killed the other Keepers in his search for the First Truth, a book of magic that will give him ultimate power. And he believes that Alissa and Strell hold the secret of the book’s hiding place.

Alissa is the only student living in the Hold, learning a millennium’s worth of magic from the last surviving Master. Even shape-shifting to her dragon-like raku form is becoming second nature. But when a spell goes awry, Alissa is transported back four centuries to an era when the Hold and its city thrive with magic students and their tutors.

Separated from the man she loves by four hundred years, Alissa’s distress and confusion are causing her to lose control of her shape-shifting. If she can’t return to her own time, Alissa will be permanently transformed into her bestial form with no memory of her human life—or her love.

Alissa never believed in magic. But then she went to the Hold, a legendary fortress where human Keepers once learned magic from enigmatic Masters. Under the tutelage of the last surviving Master, Alissa discovered that she had inherited her father’s magical ability.

But the Hold is ruled by Bailic, the renegade Keeper who seized the First Truth, a book of magic he will use to harness the might of the city of the dead and wreak a war of total devastation. The book has thwarted Bailic’s every attempt to access it, while it continually calls to Alissa—who must summon all her will to resist it. For if she gives in to the First Truth’s ultimate power and knowledge, she will be utterly changed—and the man she loves could be lost to her forever.

Alissa is steadily advancing in her magical studies with the last surviving Master at the legendary Hold. But she’s haunted by dreams—dreams revealing that other Masters have survived.

Alissa’s dreams lead her to a distant island where she and a rescue party discover countless Masters, alive and part of a flourishing magical society. But instead of being welcomed, Alissa finds that she herself may need to be rescued. The Masters’ leader, Keribdis, believes that she should be Alissa’s teacher, whether Alissa likes it or not. When Alissa rebels, she endangers not only her magic but also her life.