On a plaza at the edge of downtown San Francisco, Oz and Drew-Crown Princess of Pacifica and Crown Prince of Midlam-find Finn as he steps out of a broken down, burned out egg-shaped ship cloaked in the recesses of a portal. With no memory of who or from which When he is, Finn is a puzzle that time-traveler Oz wants to solve-with the help of Drew, a cat named Wick, and the extremely touch-phobic Emperor. As they come closer to assembling the puzzle, Oz realizes that the picture isn’t about Finn or When he’s from, but about the Emperor she’s known all her life. As a teenager, he saved the life of six-year-old Crown Prince Jackson, but King Jackson is now forty-three and the Emperor a year younger, and no one knows where he came from or why he refuses to be touched-or his name.

Oz describes him as an icon of the city and protector of all, but she’s beginning to wonder: who is the Emperor, really? With all of time at her beck and call, she’s determined to find out.