In an abbey-city whose wards are sustained by ghostly song, Verena Arkwright discovers that an eclipse codex that rewrites ancestry is forcing her to recover a stolen claim to the throne before dawn. She must ally with Caius Ravenhurst and Cedric Ironwood against Celestine Blackwood, guardian of the old order. As the buried record opens, they learn that the method of breaking the curse is more dangerous than the curse itself. In the end, Verena Arkwright builds a new city where humans, vampires, and werewolves live under one law.
