They call him the Grey Cardinal. People say even the king is a puppet in his hands. The night when the master Tariyen Grime entered the dark underground where I was waiting for execution, he changed my fate. Intending to turn me into a obedient pawn in his chess game, he didn’t realize that for me—Claudia de Frakiz, the heiress of an executed house—by his light hand it would be decreed that I become the greatest villain in the kingdom.