The story begins with the royal family of Petrogaus taking a tour of allied lands, when the trip suddenly turns deadly. King Aulkar and Queen Lionore are found dead, and Princess Alaina hovers near death from separate poisonings. Prince Jayuan is forced to go into hiding with his comatose twin sister, only to discover--through the words written in his father's personal journal, that the young woman he'd grown up knowing as his twin was actually an orphan, and the fatal trip a sham, designed to gain the dead king an audience with the mysterious Sages of Medigar.

Waiting until Alaina was healthy, King Jayuan sets out on the same journey, and faces some of the hardest trials of his young life at the hands of the sages. He's only able to continue on because of a strange bond he has with Alaina, that allows her to share feelings, draw away pain, and other strange abilities, but only with Jayuan. The sages offer to reveal the secret of Alaina's heritage and mysterious powers, but only once she herself has undertaken dangerous trials of her own.

But the plot that led to the King and Queen's death still lives, despite the death of the assassin and the capture of the informant traitor. An ambassadore from the distant land of Octeri arrives, offering friendship and trade to the new king. But when Alaina's trials are completed and Jayuan summoned back to an audience with the sages, he discovers the ambassadore might be the missing link to the conspiracy, and the harbenger of a greater threat to Petrogaus. At the same time it becomes clear that Alaina is the descendent of an ancient race of women assassins known as the Mind Mages, bent on conquest and murder, and had been destroyed by the Octeri in the distant past. The sages are also survivors of this ancient war, hiding from the world that feared their powers, the only form of atonement they can conceive of. They offer Alaina the chance to use her deadly mental powers for the betterment of her and the man she loves, and to fail to do so could mean more than her own death.

The Octeri, now fearing the rebirth of their ancient foe and an alliance with Petrogaus, attack and conquer Petrogaus's allies, adding their warfleets to the Octeri war machine in preparation of besieging and conquering Petrogaus itself. But at the moment they've landed troops on the island nation of Petrogaus, they also mistakenly send an army to attack the sage's stronghold, succeeding in forging the alliance they so feared. Petrogaus successfully flings the enemy troops back into the ocean, and en mass, the captured fleets defect and turn their guns against the conquering Octeri. Weakened, the Octeri huttle down and defend their new conquests viciously, but are steadily pushed back towards their own homeland by the combined might of Petrogaus and her allies. Finally, Octeri itself is once again sacked, though this time her people are allowed to choose their future course for themselves, rather than have it dictated by a conquering force. The sages once again return to their seclusion, not wishing to repeat the same mistakes their ancestors had, and Petrogaus leaves Octeri as freeing heroes.

I'm still working on the original draft, though I'm close to beginning the warfare portion. Things may change between now and the point when I'm ready to allow people to read the novel for commenting, though this is the best representation of how I intend the story to turn out at this point.