"You're fifteen. You spend your time at school and at Val's hair salon with Baker, Val's son, who has eyes that are like falling off a cliff into space. The salon is a space of safety, but also of possibility and dreams. When you dream, you visit an enchanted forest full of friends and wonder. You dream of witches and magic, of hair so rich and alive that it grow upwards and outwards into a wild landscape, becomes trees and leaves, and houses birds...

Forced to flee to the king's court in the West, sixteen-year-old Kalothia, who was raised in secret, becomes caught up in deadly power struggles and romantic intrigue in the opulent kingdom of Galla as she, led by the Goddess herself, must choose between her country and her heart.