Despite Rosha's efforts, she will never fit in. To her classmates, she is forever an outsider, a girl from the fringes of the empire just lucky enough to have well-off parents. To her teachers, she is either a charity case or an exception to the rule that Gorenten just aren't capable of performing complex magic. Worse, still, she is nothing but a status symbol to her father?a child gifted with magic to show his powerful friends that even people like them could belong in the empire. As if she doesn't have enough problems already.

Haunted by the invisible rules that pull her dreams just out of grasp, she walks out on the eve of her final exams, throwing away her one chance at becoming an official mage of the empire. She practices magic outside the mage council's grasp, one of the worst crimes anyone could commit.

Years later, her father's shoddy business deals have finally landed him in trouble and he disappears without a trace. Rosha reluctantly enters the services of a rich sorcerer, his last known connection. The sorcerer's sudden death leaves her stranded in a sea of enemies?and the knowledge that the man is the voice behind the ageless, faceless emperor. To protect herself and her family, Rosha must impersonate the most powerful man in the empire. As she becomes everything she has ever hated, she stumbles upon conspiracies that seek to break the empire from within...