For the Venia Law Keeper, Marise, returning home isn’t something she wants to do, but duty dictates that she must answer Lord Timur’s call for assistance and investigate the attempt on his life by a vampire. Faced with her old home, she tries hard to suppress the memories it evokes, of happier times in the arms of her ex-lover, Jascha, and of the darker times with him that led to her leaving. She puts the atmosphere and looks she receives down to fear from the attempt to kill Timur, but when she lays eyes on her lord, she realises that it may be for another reason and that the attacker may not have been a vampire after all. Left with only one other source of information, a guard injured in the attack to a point beyond recovery and left to remain awaiting death, she decides to question him before he dies and then get the hell out of there. Only when she sees that the dying guard is Jascha, she begins a battle with her heart that will see her struggle to turn her back on Jascha and her family again, and maintain her sense of duty. Is fifty years enough to forgive the one you love for breaking your heart? Will Marise finally confess to everything she’s held inside and kept hidden from him? And can Jascha convince Marise to listen to what he has to say and make her love him again?