Raine’s current situation continues to maintain its usual level of disaster. She is currently trying to track down and apprehend the sorcerers who had busted out of the Saghred in the previous book with limited success. Among the other escapees is her father, who currently inhabits the body of one of the Guardians and Sarad Nukpana who is currently *Jerk the Bodiless. She is also under investigation for a number of murders and elven politics turns out to be just as murky and sinister as goblin politics. (Since this has been the usual situation from book one onward, I shouldn’t need to explain it, but still.)

Things heat up a great deal when it turns out that Sarad Nukpana is draining the life of various elven officials and mages in an effort to regrow his body. He has decided to make it look like he and Raine are in cahoots, and leaves her one of his victims in the middle of the street.To make things more interesting, it turns out that Markus Sevelien, one of Raine’s occasional employers may have betrayed her. (Given that the main reason he had initially worked with her was essentially because of her family’s reputations as pirates, I was surprised at how hurt she was.)

Bewitched and Betrayed by Lisa Shearin on A Wicked Convergence of Circumstances