Elion has lived a contrasting life: that of a privileged whore. Her body has not been her own since she was sixteen, but she resides in one of the best brothels in the city.

The long civil war has finally ended. The kingdom has been dismantled, the nobility cast down. In the aftermath of the devastation former Lady Aedraline Wilcraft and her three friends seek a new life. Forced from the homes of their childhood they must find a way to make new ones. They settle in the remote village of Arbiter, and there Aedraline runs into Cedris Hollowmin, an old friend who had before been beyond her reach due to social class and his being a general in the rebel army. Cedris has been dispatched to Arbiter as a representative of the new law, a post he himself pressed for. Because he wants this chance, a chance that before would have never been granted to him.