Divîner: Someone with the ability to do magic, marked by white hair.
Maji: A divîner that has had their Awakening to activate their powers at the age of 13. Their powers come through a connection to the Sky Mother and other gods.
Kosidán: Someone without the ability to do magic.
Sêntaro: Spirtual guardians of magic.
Orïsha: The Kingdom this book is set in.
Ilorin: A fishing village; the place where Zélie and Tzain are from.
Lagos: The capital of Orïsha, the home of the Royal Palace, and where Amari and Inan lived.
Chândomblé: A maji temple.
The Hidden Temple: A hidden island that appears every 100 years during the solstice, and the only place the ritual to restore magic can occur.
The main protagonist of the story. A divîner chosen by the gods to return magic to the divîners. She is impulsive and headstrong but cares deeply for those around her.
The Princess of Orïsha. She escaped the palace after witnessing her handmaiden be killed by her father. She meets up with Zélie and Tzain and joins their mission to return magic to the divîners.
Zélie's older brother. He is protective of Zélie and wants her to be safe. He is a kosidán with a strong fighting ability.
The Prince of Orïsha and one of the antagonists of the story. He is originally a kosidán but becomes a maji throughout the story and joins the others to bring back magic.
The King of Orïsha and the main antagonist of the story. He despises divîners and maji after a group of maji killed his first wife and their children. He killed many maji as retaliation and severed their connection to magic.
In the land of Orïsha, there are two types of people, divîners, and kosidán. In the past, before the start of the book, divîners were free to become maji and practice magic. All types of people lived in harmony, and maji could use their powers to serve their village. Then a group of anti-monarchist maji killed the King of Orïsha's wife and children. This started a wave of violence called The Raid, where guards slaughtered every maji in one night. Zélie watched her mother be killed in front of her. The King of Orïsha, Saran, went a step further and severed all maji's connection to the gods, thus removing the ability for the surviving divîner children to become maji.
In a post-Raid Orïsha, divîners are second-class citizens. Their white hair makes it easy to identify them, and they face severe oppression and violence. Households with divîners must pay a heavy tax, and guards can beat up divîners and anyone that associates with them without repercussions.
At the beginning of the book, Zélie and Tzain find their father, Baba, after nearly drowning while trying to go fishing so he can have the income to pay an increasing divîner tax. Zélie and Tzain decide to go to Lagos, the capital city, to sell some of the fish they already have. After Zélie has made the sale and received enough gold coins to sustain her family, she gets roped into helping a random girl escape the marketplace. The girl turns out to be Amari, the Princess of Orïsha.
Amari had been in the palace eavesdropping on her father in the throne room. He had found a magical artifact, a scroll, that activates a divîner's powers and allows them to be maji. He demonstrates the transformation on Amari's handmaiden, then kills her. Distraught, Amari decides to steal the scroll and leave the palace. Amari, Zélie, and Tzain escape the guards and leave Lagos.
In Ilorin, Zélie takes the scroll to her mentor, Mama Agba. It activates her powers, and she has a vision of Tzain, Amari, and Zélie traveling to the Hidden Temple so they can restore magic. Meanwhile, Saran has tasked Inan with retrieving the scroll and Amari by any means necessary. Inan and his team arrive in Ilorin and set fire to it, killing many innocent people. Zélie, Tzain, Amari, Mama Agba, and Baba manage to escape.
The trio begins their quest, but along the way, Inan starts seeing Zélie in his dreams, and a white streak appears in his hair. At first, he thinks Zélie has poisoned him, but he soon realizes that he is a maji and that his powers awoke after touching the scroll. This further motivates him to find and kill Zélie, destroy the scroll, and be rid of magic forever.
The group reaches Chândomblé, a maji temple, and finds Lekan, the last sêntaro after the rest were killed during The Raid. He tells them of the ritual that has to be performed to restore the connection to magic. They must complete the ritual during the solstice at the Hidden Temple, which resides on an island that only appears every 100 years. After the solstice ends, the island disappears, and their only chance to restore magic will be gone. The ritual requires three artifacts: the scroll, the sunstone, and the bone dagger. Lekan gives them the bone dagger and tells them they must find the sunstone. Zélie goes through an Awakening ritual to connect her to the Sky Mother, making her the only maji that can do the ritual to reconnect magic.
Inan and his guards catch up to them, forcing them to flee from Chândomblé. Lekan sacrifices himself to lets the others escape. The trio makes their way to Ibeji, a desert city overrun by divîner slaves. Many of these slaves compete in a coliseum competition where the winners receive their freedom, riches, and eternal life. Eternal life is believed to be gifted by the sunstone, and riches come from the nobles who sell their slaves to the coliseum. Zélie, Tzain, and Amari enter to watch the games and witness a brutal slaughtering. The game is designed intentionally so no one has a chance at winning. They decide to try and steal the sunstone, but when they're caught, Zélie enters them in the next round. Using her newly awakened magic, their team wins, and they obtain the sunstone.
Meanwhile, in Chândomblé, the only path to follow the trio is destroyed, so Inan and his guards must wait for builders to come and construct a way for them to go. Inan searches through the temple, looking for clues as to where they could have gone, but he comes up empty. Finally, he decides to use his powers to visit Zélie in his dreams, where she accidentally gives a clue to where they are. Upon waking, he is found by Admiral Kaea, who realizes he is a maji and tries to tell the others. They fight, and Inan accidentally kills her.
Inan, having abandoned the other guards, catches up to the trio. He and Zélie fight, and while they are distracted, Tzain and Amari are captured. Zélie and Inan have to work together to rescue them, and Inan decides to join them in the mission to reconnect magic. The group that took Tzain and Amari turn out to be divîners that live in the woods to escape to oppression that comes from living in society. Inan and Zélie find them and explain the mission. The leader, a young girl named Zulaikha, is so excited at the prospect of magic returning that she demands they throw a solstice party. At this party, Inan shares his ideas of a new Orïsha, one in which maji and kosidán can live in harmony, and he invites Zélie to come to Lagos with him after the mission is over to implement this idea. But the festivities stop when Saran and many guards ambush the camp and kill nearly all the inhabitants - mainly children. Tzain and Amari manage to escape, but Zélie is captured.
Zélie is taken to a guard post, where Saran brutally tortures her. Tzain and Amari bring a group of newly-awakened maji to rescue her. Inan helps her escape but decides to stay with his father. Upon seeing the violence from the maji, Inan switches sides again and decides to help Saran end magic and tells him the location of the Hidden Temple.
Zélie, Tzain, Amari, and others make it to the Hidden Temple just in time for the solstice. Saran is there with Zélie and Tzain's Baba, and she gives up the sunstone and the scroll for her Baba's safety. But when Saran kills Baba, Zélie lashes out with her magic and kills many guards. In her frenzy, Inan tricks her to destroy the scroll.
Zélie uses her magic to forge a connection with her ancestors and is guided by her mother's spirit into doing a different ritual. The book ends on an open-ended note, unsure if the ritual was successful.