The night that the world came together to have peace, Rue Desvaux lost her excuse for independence. She'd spent the first decade of her life bound to a bed, and when she fled home to join the army, she promised herself that she'd never let her health or her family cage her again.

Now her country expects her to return to a peaceful, domestic life that never existed. The masses that once celebrated her as a hero now view her existence as a curiosity, her scars as a problem for her future husband to fix, and her sacrifices as failures of her own better judgement.

But when the negotiated peace begins to break down over old grudges, and the aftershocks of the Bloody Frontier become impossible to disregard, and the men who fought and died for kings begin to wonder whether a future can be built without them, it becomes apparent to her that the world is not yet ready to let go of its soldiers.