"It was just a game at the start . . . Adlai Bringer remembers going to the desert market with her father: the colorful tents, the wink of gold, and her father's shadow, black as night, as he sent it over to the stalls to steal whatever trinket she wanted. He called it the Shadow Game. After her father disappears, Adlai goes back to the market determined to find some trace of him, and stealing what she can with her shadow. Until one day she picks...

Fallon Bane, cursed to feel pain from touch, accidentally swaps powers with Ariyon, the only person able to touch her, leading her on a perilous journey to save him from the land of souls while navigating her new abilities as a Maven healer as the looming threat of war grows.

Told from three perspectives, outcast Hew and wish-granting canine Orail help seventeen-year-old Ália through a series of divine Ordeals, but there is more at stake in the kingdom than just Ália's future, and Orail may be the key to saving them all.