Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria is quite distressed. The reason? Her favorite granddaughter, Princess Alix of Hesse, has fallen in love with the tsesarevich of Russia, a gentle young man named Nicholas. The Queen is convinced that the Romanov court is a dark and treacherous place – a belief that is accentuated when she receives a report that two ballet dancers have been found dead in the Winter Palace. When Alix accepts Nicky’s invitation to a grand ball in celebration of the summer solstice, the Queen calls on detective Trevor Welles to sail with them to St. Petersburg. The rest of the Scotland Yard forensics team poses as bodyguards and governesses; Trevor’s fellow detective Rayley Abrams, who is still recovering physically and emotionally from the team’s soul-wrenching last case in Paris, the aristocratic medical student Tom Bainbridge, the romantic and bookish linguist Emma Kelly, and bobby Davy Mabrey, whose youth makes him the perfect choice to infiltrate a revolutionary group inside St. Petersburg University. For it has been revealed that one of the slain dancers was the brother of a political assassin. Protecting the Queen and Alix will be challenge enough, but shortly after the group arrives in Russia a third victim is dramatically revealed and the team is swept up in a wave of intrigue as they struggle to adapt to the fabulously wealthy and morally corrupt Romanov court. And when all the forces collide at the grand ball, Trevor and his friends will be forced to admit that, at least in Russia, the line between guilt and innocence is blurry indeed.