The living sanctuary… Exiled for creating alchemy's most elusive concoction—the Elixir of Life—Imara found herself desperately alone. She made a new family, a guild where outcasts like herself could find safe haven. The Philosophers became a proper guild but remained a fellowship for the lonely, a sanctuary for lost, with Imara herself at its heart. The next century held both windfalls and woeful tides. Forever changed by deaths and betrayals, Imara fears loosing her family and the man she's grown to love. With a coup in the works and a hellish pact hanging over their heads, the guild's fortunes have never been so precariously balanced on the edge of ruin. Can she save everyone she loves without losing the guild in the process? The lonely sadist… Aster is an enigma to most people. A deadly assassin with the Philosophers guild and a sadist--so they say. But Aster considered himself merely curious, living an unremarkable life of contract killings and longing for Imara, the only woman he's ever loved. When bloody mutiny and deadly betrayal threaten, can Aster save what matters most and find joy amid the grief?