Grace has survived all of her life by simply doing her duty and not standing out, like all the people of her village, until the day their ruling warlord decides to claim her as the season's tax. In a moment of blind panic, she flees straight into the first storm of winter...and into the life of a mysterious recluse. Now stranded in his tower until the spring thaw, she finds more than her mere freedom in peril as no one and nothing is as it seems...