Even in a world where people endowed with extraordinary and usually dangerous abilities are not uncommon, Katsu is feared and shunned. At the age of eight she had committed her first murder, and since then no one had been able to defeat her in battle: Katsa had become an invincible warrior... and an executioner, a limp instrument in the hands of her uncle, king Randa. She longs to free herself from the Gift that seems to bring her and others only pain, to atone for the suffering caused, and teams up with the young Prince of Lyonides to uncover the plot and wrest the native lands from the hands of the evil king. She has yet to find out what secret hides her brother-in-arms and how much evil can make a cruel man, endowed with power over the human mind.