Elin grows up in a remote village where her mother tends the Toda, dragon-like war-beasts bred for the Grand Duke's army. When a mysterious illness kills several Toda in her care, the court sentences her mother to death, and the woman spends her last act on a forbidden art that carries Elin out of reach. Rescued and raised by a beekeeper, the girl grows up with a gift for understanding animals that nobody taught her, and one that will eventually pull her into the rift between the kingdom's divine ruler and its Grand Duke.