Preparing for the queens' sixteenth birthday celebration and navigating the fallout of the Quickening, the sisters reassess their strategic paths to the throne using new understandings of their powers and destinies.
While Arsinoe searches for a cure to Jules's legion curse, Mirabella abandons the rebel army for Katharine, but the dead queens urge caution in trusting her, and as allegiances switch, the fate of Fennbirn Island will be determined.
When she finally gets the crown, Queen Elizabeth faces murmurs of dissent among her people and the threat of her sisters returning to Fennbirn to usurp her throne.