Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds and tide, and snatching her islands from the brink of destruction.

But the gods have a wicked sense of justice and they demand an exchange for their help: Coralys must marry the first man to set foot on her pier. Coralys expects the fleet of a neighboring country to come to rescue her people, led by its prince, a loyal ally. What she gets instead is a fisherman so sunburnt and stinking that her court can barely keep their breakfast down.

Coralys, undaunted, marries the fisherman just as she promised the gods, and sets out with him in his unkempt dinghy, with nothing but hopes of revenge against the gods to keep her from despair. But what this fearless queen does not know is that the fisherman is actually the god of the sea and he stepped on her dock on purpose.

His own kingdom besieged, his body terribly wounded, and his place as a god threatened, the god of the sea has plans to turn the tides set against him and finally offer a place of refuge for his people. But to work the magic he needs will require the willing help of the one woman bent on his destruction.