The mutant draft Sil, who readers met in The Bond, leads a ragtag group of desperate refugees to hoped-for safety in The Deep. Along the way, they meet an orangutan who loves poetry and guards the narrow path into the jungle. But safety proves elusive as the refugees are pulled back into the war unfolding on the heights. A fearsome bee-mutant attacks as part of his plan to murder his sister, the lovely and dangerous Hive Queen.
Will love or hate rule? Who, in the end, can you count on as family when you are the only one of your kind? Their destinies entwined, Sil, Dinitra, and Fir reunite and must choose between each other and the worlds they once called their own.