Brienna is an arden, a student of the five passions - art, music, wit, dramatics and knowledge. On the summer solstice in her seventeenth year, she hopes to become mistress of the passion - one who has mastered her area of study. But Brienna knows that she was not granted a coveted place at her passion-house because of talent, like her arden-sisters. She is here because someone wished her hidden.

Brienna has never learned her father's identity. All she knows is that her mother was Valenian - from the land of elegance, etiquette and learning - and her father was Maevan. Brienna has never set foot in Maevana, but knows it is a wild, windswept place, fiercely proud of its ancient heritage of magical warrior queens - yet now suffering under the rule of a tyrannical king.

Then Brienna begins to have visions: the inherited memories of a long-dead Maevan ancestor, who hid the legendary Stone of Eventide. If the Stone can be found, the rightful queen of Maevana can be restored to the throne. And Brienna has the power to do it.

Swept into a dangerous new life of secret alliances, generations-old enmities, deep family secrets and smouldering first love, Brienna must ask herself what is stronger: the bond of chosen family, or that of blood . . .