Verity Tavmantok is eighteen, a skilled artist, and... she sees ghosts. However, she doesn\'t know this until she receives an invitation from Duchess Blumska to paint a portrait of her only son, Alexander, on his twentieth birthday. Verity realises that this is perhaps her only chance to escape her older sister\'s suffocating guardianship and forge her own path into the future, so she runs away from the family estate on the islands and ventures into the continent for the first time in her life. The girl is enchanted by the beauty of the luxurious landscapes, as well as by the witty, incredibly handsome and gallant Alexander. But it doesn\'t take long before she begins to be tormented by nightmares, and the dark side of Bloom emerges from behind the sickly sweet faade...