A week after an attack that nearly killed him and his son, Jaster Mereel finds Mostross dead on a battlefield. His killer is a Jedi, grievously wounded, who Jaster takes into his care. By Mandalorian tradition, Jon Antilles owes him a life-debt, and Jaster is cunning enough not to let such a thing slip away. It's meant to be an entirely political arrangement. It doesn't stay that way for long.

The Republic falls in the span of a day. Xanatos, desperate to keep his son out of the line of fire, makes a reckless deal with the new emperor, whose face he's never seen. But there are dark secrets behind the emperor's fury and prophecies that won't let themselves be thwarted, and Xanatos is nothing but a pawn in a far greater game.

In order to take all of Granta's holdings for himself, Tor draws on Telosian tradition and marries Granta off to the corpse of someone in his House. This someone is Tarre Vizsla, the last Mand'alor of House Vizsla and Jedi Master of great renown. There's a reason the Jedi usually burn their dead. It's a shame the Tor didn't realize that before he stuck Tarre on a remote moon alongside a Force Blank with a habit of making the Force go just a little....odd sometimes.