In a society held together by blood, oaths, and personal fealty, marriage is anything but a romantic affair. Hilda is the second sister, the plain one, the overlooked, the put upon. Her mother, Edith, has tricked the local ealdorman into betrothing his only son and heir to Hilda, a role that should have fallen to her enchanting older sister Elswyth, who was kidnapped by vikingar three years earlier.

On the way to her wedding, Hilda meets a heartbroken king, his petulant child bride, an abbess who wrestles with a great torment, and the shy young man she is supposed to marry. As the days wind down to a wedding wanted by no one but Edith, Hilda discovers that each of these people has, like she, had their lives thrown into turmoil and misery by the actions of the now absent Elswyth.

As a knot of secrets and lies begins to unravel, threatening disgrace, bloodshed, and slavery, the painfully forthright Hilda must decide whether to keep pulling on the string or violate her conscience by knotting it up again.