When Kaelan slays the Black Duke and captures his undefeated champion, he expects nothing in the dungeon beneath Blackspire Keep but a bitter enemy waiting for the noose. What he finds is Isolde—the Iron Maiden—stripped of everything but her pride and her chains. She does not beg for her life. She begs to be conquered one last time, body and soul, by the only man strong enough to unmake her. In the torchlit dark of a prison cell, a warrior's defeat becomes the sweetest surrender imaginable...