However due to the politics of the day they cannot deliver him home directly and when he falls ill his stay at the Keep in the Northwinds is prolonged. Tended by Suzanna de Viennes Riain is repulsed by her but finds himself drugged and seduced by her.

Leaving her to return home Suzanne shows herself to be mentally unstable and she delivers a curse onto him that her vengeance will follow him from that day forward.

Riain returns to Chale and tries to forget about the curse. However he possesses his mother’s psychic gifts and when he is promised in marriage to Miyoshi Shimota he knows that danger is on the way.

Danger is in the form of Suzanna who had been looked away in an asylum since delivering her curse. However under the law of her land on the death of her father she was to be made ruler, a position she gladly accepts.

Far more dangerous now than she had been before she sets about disposing of Miyoshi, a woman who was determined not to marry Riain anyway.

Riain’s mother consults the Oracle to try to find a way to save her son and her friend’s daughter but when she is told there is nothing she can do she steps over the line and sets in motion a chain of events that will leave her son more beast than man.

Riain must come to terms with the beast that is now a part of him and finds himself drawn into the darker side of his world in his quest to conquer the beast within him.

But Suzanna is never far away and Riain must travel into the future to escape her. Even then Suzanna is not far behind and growing more powerful all the time, having allied herself with the Destroyer of Mens souls.

In this story it is not always clear who is friend and who is foe and it is left for the reader to find out just whose motives are true. In this respect there are even some surprises in store.

Throughout though Riain is forever watched over by the mysterious Maeve who has captured his heart but remains always just out of his reach. And only when his journey has completed and he is finally free of Suzanna will he be free to be with his love.

A delightful story that somehow seems less dark than Ms Boyett-Compo’s other novels. Perhaps because of the ending which I won’t relay here but if you read it you will see what I mean.