Feisty, sharp-witted Didio Twite returns in this exhilarating new adventure in the Wolves Chronicles. Dido has hardly set foot in London when she is summoned to see the archbishop, who tells her some dreadful news; Both King Richard and her good pal Simon, the Duke of Battersea, are missing. Before Dido can begin to look for them, she is kidnapped and taken to a derelict mansion surrounded by a deadly moat. Someone thinks Dido knows where the king is hiding.

Things are not going well for Simon, either. He must hide King Richard, who is sick and likely to die soon, from his enemies. Simon also has to find an ancient coronet, without which no new king can be legitimately crowned. To make matters worse, Simon himself is next in line for the throne. Even nature seems to be conspiring against him: When floodwaters rise, he must evacuate the king to a lonely monastery on the coast, just where the enemy Burgundians are landing an invasion force.

Add some pesky bears imported from Russia by mistake; the United Real Saxon Army, whose memebers like to meditate and levitate; and an evil baron who is also a werewolf, and Dido and Simon are up to their necks in devilish danger.