Michael wakes from a dream he cannot remember and discovers that something inside him is missing.
At first he dismisses the feeling as illness or exhaustion. But when an unfamiliar shortcut leads him into an impossible garden inhabited by a sharp-toothed woman named Juliet, he learns a terrifying truth: a vital part of his soul-his shadow-self-has been stolen and carried into another world.
That world is known as the World Below.
Juliet offers help. Two renowned magi, Johann von Goethe and Giacomo Casanova, can supposedly recover what has been taken from him. Desperate to be made whole again, Michael agrees to accompany them to the distant Isle of Calypso, believing he is beginning a quest to reclaim his lost self.
Instead, he becomes someone else.
Upon reaching Calypso, Michael undergoes a powerful magical initiation. His memories are obscured, his former identity stripped away, and he is given a new name: Gustavo di Capulet. The man who arrived on the island seeking his missing shadow all but vanishes. In his place stands a novice magus destined for the Conclave, the mysterious order that governs magical affairs from the distant City of Night.
Under the guidance of Goethe and Casanova, Gustavo begins studying the Great Arcanum. He learns the foundations of magic, trains as a swordsman, survives assassination attempts and religious persecution, and forms deep bonds with his teachers and with Erica Nicolopolus, a gifted swordswoman whose friendship becomes one of the defining relationships of his new life.
Yet something refuses to stay buried.
Night after night, Gustavo dreams of a pale woman with dark hair and clear blue eyes. The sight of her fills him with longing, grief, and a sense of loss he cannot explain. He does not know that she belongs to the life he has forgotten. He does not know that she is his wife.
As summer draws to a close, Gustavo leaves Calypso and begins the long journey toward the City of Night, where powerful political forces are already moving around him. Along the way he encounters a mysterious hooded figure pursued by his teachers, survives attacks by enemies he does not understand, and catches a fleeting glimpse of a giant woman who bears the face of the woman from his dreams.
When fate finally brings that woman into his path, Gustavo believes he has found the answer to the longing that has haunted him for months.
He does not yet realize that the mystery of who he was-and what was done to him-has only begun
