Aylin Aga is the khan’s stubborn youngest daughter, who recently returned home after nine years of study in a caliphate where the sanctity of curiosity is the sole commandment. All she wants is to play with her potions, until her childhood sweetheart Ender Volkan, now the widowed Khan of Kurtkara, comes calling. For the sake of her khanate, Aylin puts aside her resentment in hopes the boy she knew survived inside the man he became, but then her grandmother sends her a charmed ring and a warning: He’s not who you think he is. As a university-trained chemist, Aylin knows magic isn’t real, but she can’t shake the suspicion that Ender is hiding a dangerous secret.

Dismissing both the ring and its warning, Aylin puts her education to use tutoring Ender’s three rambunctious sons, befriending their caretaker in the process. When a rebellion at the border calls Ender away, Aylin and Kian’s friendship deepens into a romance that threatens to shatter her carefully constructed life. By the time Ender returns from the border, Aylin must decide not only which man she wants to be with, but who she wants to be.