Heavier is the head denied its crown. .

. Marius Bedwyr and his Crimson Fangs have enslaved treasure hunter Courage Faern'doln, forcing him to build human-machine abominations designed to crush enemies of the Atharian Empire.

Hidden in a secret facility known to only the Blessed Emperor and his High Holy Council, Courage toils in fire, shadow, and darkness. Gwynarra Vandiamante, outed as the last of a family of vampires hated by the Richter family, has fled to the Zyntarian Isles where the Sythrokli Oracle's riddle provides cryptic clues as to Courage's location, but it cannot see where Karina walks.

Karina Richter, cast out from her father's house due to Marius' deception and hints of her complicated feelings for Gwynarra, hunts alone in Czarnenburg's disease-ridden slums. The tripartite death goddesses to whom Courage owes a service, the Corvidiae, have other plans for the lone huntress.

While Gwyn makes her final stop before returning to Florescia for her coronation, Courage's older sister, Honor, receives her own cryptic message from the Corvidiae, who demand reuniting the White Queen with the Black Knight against the Crimson King. Along with the technomagus turned baker Xrissa Kosol, she sets out to find her brother and these enigmatic players.

But all is not well in the Empire. As Marius becomes closer to the Blessed Emperor, his Crimson Fangs doubt his devotion to freeing their homeland of Froam from Atharian rule.

Does Marius truly desire to sit on his fathers throne, or do his ambitions and vengeance lie elsewhere? And what do his ambitions hold in store for Gwynarra, Karina, Courage, and the citizens of the empire who grow wary the empire's new direction?. .