A young woman with a secret gift, born an orphan, discovers that she does not have to be given power--she can take it.   Judah, a foundling, is raised as a sibling to Gavin, heir to the kingdom of Highfall, in the great house beyond the wall. It is the seat of power at the center of Lord Elban’s great empire. Judah and Gavin share a mysterious, unnatural bond that is both the key to her survival--and her possible undoing.   As Gavin prepares to eventually ascend the throne, Judah realizes that she has no real position of her own. But Lord Elban--a man as powerful as he is cruel--has his own plans for her. To him, she is a pawn in his path to unlimited power. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants.   Outside the wall, in the starving, desperate city, a magus, a healer with a secret power unlike anything Highfall has seen in years, is newly arrived from the provinces. He, too, has plans for the empire, and at t