I never wanted to join the Queen Trials. But I’m not a victim and never have been. When a peacekeeper attacks me in a mine shaft, I fight back and win. Sort of. Because I made a mistake. I let him live. He knows my name. He’ll come after me, and he’ll kill the only person I love: my sweet, clueless brother Shellor. Nobody escapes from Locality Fourteen. There was only one way out that would protect us both: Enter the Queen Trials and become a star. Now, I’m plunged into a competition with dozens of gorgeous women from all over the kingdom.

In the realm of Kravan, children of lower-class citizens are raised in a prison-like structure called "The Tower" from birth until adulthood. Known as the Tethered, they are held in thrall until their powers reveal themselves around the time of their nineteenth birthday. Every year, the Tethered who are tested and deemed harmless are chosen to leave the Tower and join the outside world as servants to live in the households of the ruling class. Those who are deemed threats are taken away—and no one knows what happens to them, though they suspect the worst.

On her 17th birthday, Ashen Spencer is blindfolded and escorted to the massive, mysterious building known as the Arc to begin her year of training and testing in hopes that she can earn the Cure - a powerful drug given only to those deemed worthy to survive beyond their 18th birthday. Ashen has a chance to rise up from her former life of squalor and be granted a place in society, if the Panel - the mysterious group of powerful men and women in charge of the Arc - deems her year a success.

Water is scarce. Deserts have taken over the land. Nuclear war has devastated humanity. Humans live in walled super cities to keep out the irradiated. The land that was formerly known as America is divided into kingdoms ruled by royal elites. Born into the lowest Echelon of the Kingdom of Phangloria, 16-year-old Zea Calico faces a life of hunger, thirst, and toil. The only way out of this drudgery is revolution, and Zea is desperate to help the cause.

Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she's descended from magicians, she's skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she's just an ordinary woman who loves books. She seeks answers from a member of the most prominent family of magicians, but she quickly learns that finding the truth won't be easy, especially when he turns out to be as artless as her, and more compelling and dangerous than books.