Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of violence.

Diem Bellator’s first-person account traces her agonizing search for the truest version of herself. At the novel’s beginning, Diem discovers that the gods have chosen her to be the new Queen of Lumnos, and she initially resists this calling because she is convinced that she is a mortal and has no right to the throne. Furthermore, Diem initially defines her identity according to her old life in Mortal City, where her days were consumed with her work as a healer and her relationships with her family and her childhood sweetheart, Henri Albanon, who have shaped her understanding of who she is. Now, faced with a million dramatic changes in her life, she fears the necessity of accepting her royal calling because to do so would be to forsake her identity as she has come to understand it. Her foray into palace life thus launches her journey toward self-discovery.

Diem’s first-person perspective illustrates the finer nuances of her struggle to find and claim her true identity. When she first arrives at the palace “wearing ill-fitting clothing that [stinks] of brine,” her “colorless eyes rimmed red with exhaustion” (31), Diem feels out of place and alone among the royals.