When the last city of the old world fell, no songs were sung for the men and dwarves who died there. Only one beast remembered. And it remembered in hunger. Devastating campaigns have at last prepared Skálda to face her nemesis, the Lord Prince. The ultimate throne beckons.... But her adult Bael is growing ever larger, ever more manipulative and dangerous to control. Worst of all, the Republic's fears have come true. The greatest of human mages means to finish a conquest that started forty years ago - and the Betrayer has every intention of purging all dragons to claim the throne Skálda has sacrificed everything for. But this war proves far deadlier than one mage's ambitions to rule. A web of political agendas a thousand years in the making will ensure that no rider survives the brutal new warzones. The Kvael-Akar will have to make an impossible choice-defy Bale's hold on her to save Elondria while there is still time, or give in to the Realm-Breaker's will to make her entirely his... and lay her to ruin. Whatever she decides, whichever continent burns in the end, she will lose him-or herself.