This is not a stand-alone book but is the first volume in the Rift series.A cold-blooded killer lusts for others' magic. A drug-addicted detective vows to thwart him. Dragged into a dangerous homicide investigation, Andrin Sethuel alone stands between the killer's murderous desires and his future victims' salvation, a kingdom's freedom and its enslavement.Andrin has survived a childhood that should have destroyed him. Slavers brutally murdered his parents in front of him, ripped him away from everything he knew, and addicted him to drugs. The aftermath leaves him warring against hostility, prejudice, and suspicion on every front. And it leaves him entrenched in self-loathing. Yet despite the odds, he becomes head of the Torvian kingdom's criminal investigative forces.Andrin speculates that the killer scythes magic from his victims to reap power and augment his burgeoning might, but such a capability is unthinkable. And wielding spells without a catalyst should be impossible. Yet irrefutably, the killer is wrenching his victims' craft away with his own unimaginable sorcery, growing more powerful and treacherous with each successive murder.While Andrin struggles to expose the murderer and his search for the killer turns into a fight for his life, lies and duplicity threaten to rip his only friend from him--and she's keeping a secret that could be the key to solving the murders. Andrin is forced to choose between his friend and his duty, and ultimately between his king and a betrayal that will save his country from a ruthless conqueror's invasion.