Every month, the great black dragon comes. Every month, a child is snatched. That's all the village of Kalma knows. But Semra was one of those children, and she knows the truth: there is a dragonlord in the mountain, raising the children into his own personal syndicate of assassins. When seventeen-year-old Semra learns they aren't fighting evil but are in fact evil themselves, she risks everything to expose the dragonlord. As one young, nobody assassin against the king's security and an army of her former colleagues bent on her destruction, Semra must uncover the truth and save the royal family before the dragonlord rips them apart and plunges the kingdom into war.