Koré, a courtesan in a city-planet ruled by women, seeks to sabotage his aristocrat father's campaign for their neighborhood’s imperial throne. Aided by a fragile coalition of allies, including Faziz—a male crime lord who swiftly and unnervingly sees past Koré’s pleasant facade—and Rita— a fun-loving scholar-adventurer—he recruits and campaigns for a more "traditional" candidate to challenge his father.

As Koré and Ria investigate his father's allies, they uncover the use of necromancy: a dark art that corrupts, controls, and destroys the precious, limited magical essence that supports all human life on the city-planet. Koré extends some fragile trust to Faziz and Ria so they can discover how deep the threat reaches.

But when a chance encounter with a dying god blesses him with the shapeshifting, essencebreathing powers of a dragon, Koré becomes a commodity; if discovered, he'll be imprisoned and forced to breathe magic for the throne. His deepening affection for Faziz and Ria forces him to push them away, but the corruption in his city runs deeper than just one man, and an ally's betrayal unleashes an army of the dead on his home street. Koré must trust the world with his deepest secret to stand beside the woman and man he's finally let himself love, as only the bright truth of dragon's fire can break the iron fist of a necromancer's hold.