To Bear the Aethran Gifts

When Viola Endris was eight years old, her parents sent her to live with her aunt, a steward in the royal palace. As a steward's apprentice, Viola lives a life of in-betweens - able to transverse classes between commoners, craftworkers, nobility, and royality. Viola's liminal status and disposition of curiosity allow her to discover the deep truths and secrets of those around her. She learns that a member of the royal family bears the Aethran gifts - extraordinary abilities to understand, influence, and alter the physical and spiritual realms. The descendants of the beings called the Aether also bear a liminal status: revered and envied yet deeply mistrusted and feared.

As Viola grows from childhood to maturity, she begins to unravel the complexities of the lives of those around her. Above all, Viola seeks understanding of the liminal spaces: between ignorance and understanding, between power and surrender, between life and death. She lives this life of curiosity to its fulfillment, all the while blissfully unaware of the deal she struck with the God of her ancestors so very long ago.