Daughter of a sea merchant captain, seventeen-year-old Naya Garth is on a trading mission in Ceramor when she is murdered, and resurrected by a necromancer as one of the "undead," bound to her former body by mysterious magic runes, an abomination in her homeland of Talmir--she has been effectively recruited as a spy for Talmir, and soon finds herself embroiled in politics, kidnapping, and murder, and facing the truth that she can never go home again.