Your seventeenth birthday is the last day you can count on. No one makes plans for eighteen.
In the Valta, everyone turns a year older on November 1st. Turn seventeen, and the Recruiters come for you.
No one ever hears from you again.
Today, Kress is sixteen. Tomorrow, she'll find out why.
Taken alongside her best friend and Brohn―the enigmatic boy she's spent her life avoiding―Kress is thrust into weeks of brutal training. Hand-to-hand combat. Escape rooms. Psychological tests that leave her questioning everything.
The Recruiters say they're preparing her to win a war. But the harder they push, the less their story makes sense.
With her trained raven, Render, left behind, Kress must navigate a place where every instruction raises another question―and the people demanding her trust refuse to give her answers.
She knows what they're training her to do.
What she doesn't know is why.
