At thirty-six, Anton unexpectedly found himself in the body of a ten-year-old boy—the son of a ruler of a distant mountain country in another world. Now he arrived in the neighboring mighty Empire as an honorary prisoner—or hostage. Intricate intrigues of the Empire’s nobility threaten to draw him into a whirlpool of deadly dangerous events. After all, it’s unlikely that any experienced imperial insider invested with power would fear some savage little child—shuffling the deck for a complicated solitaire of fates and lives of many people… But the blood of the rulers-dans that flows in the veins of the young mountaineer won’t let his enemies win.