A quiet farm town, torn in two…

Can those who remain rebuild from the ashes—and can those taken endure the road?

After Rosalie, Jonaas, and Edmond departed to chase their destinies, Aliselle Falls remained what it had always been—a quiet farming community where neighbors were family, and where Gertrude Al’Shane built a new life with her husband Jonathan and their Cathyoran friends. Then, on a late summer morning, riders came out of the east. In a single day the town is burned, lives are lost to fire and steel—and the raiders will learn, in one terrible street, that even a farm town can hold something legends are made of. But nothing can undo what follows. Many of the women and children, roped to horses and taken east, bound for a slave market in far eastern mountains.

One town. Two roads. Those who survived must learn to live again among the ashes—Gertrude becoming the leader her grieving neighbors need, Marged Llewellyn confronting ghosts she thought buried, a broken community discovering what it’s truly made of. And far to the east, on a rope in foreign lands, those taken endure—a blacksmith’s daughter who counts everything and forgets nothing, a girl who shields the youngest at a terrible price, a healer whose faith needs no chapel, and a woman whose choice may define all of their futures—each fighting, in the only ways left to them, to carry home inside themselves.

In this heart-wrenching chapter of the Innatraea series, one town’s darkest season will forge unbreakable bonds—or bury its heart in the roots forever. Stand with Aliselle Falls and dare to endure!