Fate provides them collectively. Their magic will bind them.

In the city of Verdholm, canals separate the highborns in the guts sections of the city in the lowborns along the outer sections. The town is isolated, surrounded by a fatal swamp and steam fields that ought to protect the folks of the city from your dangerous outside globe. Until it doesn’t.

For Sam, an orphaned thief who would like only to protect her brother, protection means stealing enough so she can one day buy her way right into a better about Squandering section. She’s a skilled thief, and when she’s provided a job that can change everything for her, what choice will she have but to take it?

Alec is an apothecary who all longed to join the prestigious university and be a physicker, but they rarely accept learners from the merchant course, and he’s now too aged to sign up. The surprising breakthrough of unusual magic can change his fortunes, but only if he can grasp it.

When the natural safety of the town fails and her brother is thrown into danger, Sam must become more than a thief to save lots of him, but she can’t do so by herself. In some way, she and Alec are linked through an ancient magic and collectively they could be the just ones able to end an strike that threatens to disrupt the balance within the town and bring the hazards of the outside world to them.