41 pages • 1 hour read
Nora RobertsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In the Valley of the Fey, contenders from every part of Talamh gather by the lake for the ritual that will decide the new Taoiseach (pronounced TEE-sha), their chieftain. The chosen one will see a legendary sword (named Cosantoir) in the water. Keegen O’Broin doesn’t want to be chieftain, but in the lake, he sees the face of a woman with red hair and gray eyes, and he sees the sword. He emerges from the lake and kneels before Mairghread, a former Taoiseach and mother of the chieftain Keegan is replacing. He vows to live for Talamh and stand for the light.
In present-day Philadelphia, riding the bus home from her job teaching middle schoolers, Breen O’Kelly sees a man with silver hair and feels the strange call to come home. She stops to check on the house of her mother, Jennifer Wilcox, a media director for a major advertising firm. Her mother is successful and well-manicured while 26-year-old Breen feels frazzled, anxious, and unhappy. Her best memories are of when she was young, before her father left.
In her mother’s office, a sudden breeze swirls papers from a desk drawer. Breen discovers an investment account in her name that holds nearly $4 million—money sent to her by her father, which her mother never told her about and has kept from Breen all this time.
By Nora Roberts