Seventeen-year-old heiress Lady Elara Voss, reeling from her parents' mysterious deaths, accidentally awakens her ancestor Lydia—the silver-haired, formidable first female head of the Voss family, who was sealed away two hundred years ago and erased from history. Lydia's spirit is bound to Elara's shadow: she cannot act independently in daylight and will fade away if she ventures more than ten paces from it. United by mutual need but divided by distrust, the two strike a bargain: Elara will uncover why Lydia was sealed away, and Lydia will help identify who killed Elara's parents. Their investigation draws them into the Shadow Veil, an ancient network of displaced spirits, and a conspiracy involving the rival Blackwood family. As suspicion gives way to solidarity and exploitation to redemption, ancestor and descendant must decide what they are willing to sacrifice before the boundary between life and death collapses for good.
