Miss Temple, young, wealthy and far away from home, never wanted to be a heroine. Yet her fianc� is dead - admittedly by her own hand - her companions slain and her nemesis, the terrifyingly wicked Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, still at large. It falls upon Miss Temple's tiny shoulders to destroy a deadly cabal whose alchemy threatens to enslave the world. But Dr Svenson and Cardinal Chang are alive - barely. Exhausted and outnumbered, their bodies corrupted by a poisonous blue glass, Miss Temple, Dr Svenson and Cardinal Chang must pursue their enemies through city slums and dazzling palaces as they fight to prevent the cabal's unholy marriage between man and science. In the final installment of Dahlquist's epic trilogy, an assassin, an heiress and a surgeon battle against the world's most frightening evil... in an adventure that will decide everything.