No one knows Crius' name; he's the Shadow of the Sands, the mercenary-killer and unknowable traveller. No one knows he escaped the capital to flee the pantheon. No one knows he's hjerte, and that he's slowly going insane. And he intends to keep it that way. That's until his life is thrown off-kilter when a demon-girl who swears she's not a demon offers him a job. Until he meets the person he's supposed to capture, the Prince of Romes and half-god heir. That's when his secrets threaten to spill out into the open. +++ Romes is a scary place. The capital is home of the pantheon, a family of ruling gods whose appetite for human hearts can only be sated by the hjerte who live in their temple. The desert is wrought with mercenaries, pirates and a mysterious group of demonic warriors known as the Sister-Saints. Romes is not a safe place to live. But Crius can't leave. He's bound by the all-encompassing need to rescue escaped-hjerte, like himself. But more than that, he's bound by his need for revenge. And the sister-saints seem to be offering. That's until he meets the prince, who isn't anything like his family, and discovers that the voices in his head might not just be voices -- they might belong to a greater being, who'll scream for freedom until his skull snaps in two.