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Bombay’s first female lawyer, Perveen Mistry, is compelled to bring justice to the family of a murdered female Parsi student just as Bombay’s streets erupt in riots to protest British colonial rule. Sujata Massey is back with this third installment to the Agatha and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning series set in 1920s Bombay.

November 1921. Edward VIII, Prince of Wales and future ruler of India, is arriving in Bombay to begin a fourmonth tour. The Indian subcontinent is chafing under British rule, and Bombay solicitor Perveen Mistry isn’t surprised when local unrest over the royal arrival spirals into riots. But she’s horrified by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an eighteen-year-old female Parsi student, who falls from a second-floor gallery just as the prince’s grand procession is passing by her college.

Freny had come for a legal consultation just days before her death, and what she confided makes Perveen suspicious that her death was not an accident. Feeling guilty for failing to have helped Freny in life, Perveen steps forward to assist Freny’s family in the fraught dealings of the coroner’s inquest. When Freny’s death appears suspicious, Perveen knows she can’t rest until she sees justice done. But Bombay is erupting: as armed British secret service march the streets, rioters attack anyone with perceived British connections, and desperate shopkeepers destroy their own wares so they will not be targets of racial violence. Can Perveen help a suffering family when her own is in danger?

After having promised to use her new powers to serve Fedu, the cunning god of death, and assist in his plans to remake the world, Koffi finds herself a prisoner in Thornkeep—a luxurious mansion with well-manicured gardens. But Fedu’s beautiful realm is a lie. Koffi and many other darajas are trapped there by a deadly, inscrutable mist, making escape impossible. But something within the mist calls to Koffi, igniting her magic. It soon becomes clear that the very thing imprisoning her could be the key to not only her freedom, but finally unlocking the remaining mysteries of her own magic, allowing her to fight the god of death and perhaps even win.

While Koffi attempts to decipher the secrets of the mist and learns to wield her own deadly power, Ekon is determined to make his way to Thornkeep to fight alongside her. But leaving Lkossa is easier said than done. Ekon, once a promising soldier, is now a wanted man on the run from those he once called brother. He’s forced to make new, uneasy alliances to flee Lkossa and turn his back on everything he once believed. And each day he draws closer to the realm of death, so too does Ekon draw nearer to a long-hidden truth about himself that could change his loyalties forever.

Koffi and Ekon—separated by both land and gods—risk everything to reunite. But the longer they’re apart, the more they will have to reckon with changing destinies and, maybe, changing hearts.