The premise here is that there are 4 quadrants in the kingdom. Each has its own queen to represent their quadrant. They are raised not knowing they will someday be queens so that no one will know who they are. The queens do not leave the castle keep for any reason. Citizens can go there to relay their concerns to their queen. Keralie is a world class thief. She "bumps into" Varin and takes the priceless cargo he is carrying. It turns out to be a few memory chips that can only be read by ingesting them. Her boss finds out about her bounty and tries to have her killed to get his hands on it. She ingests the memories to spite him and finds that they are memories of the queens being murdered. She goes to the castle keep to try to warn the queens and keep the murders from happening. It's actually a fairly interesting plot. I enjoyed the book.