If someone took you, as a baby, to be raised away from your people--an oppressive, ruling caste--would you feel rescued or kidnapped? Born a thousand years after the planet Chudami is first colonized, Mayah’s world unravels when she discovers that Sukren, her beloved serf guardian since birth, is in fact her political handler, and the one who took her. Now Mayah has to decide: does Sukren truly care for her, or does he see her as nothing but a tool for the Uprising? Sukren can’t answer that question for her; he can barely answer it for himself. Torn between his loyalty to the Uprising and his love for Mayah, he lives on an agonizing knife’s edge. Between the two of them lies the fate of the Uprising, but whether Sukren can persuade Mayah to remain true to it--whether he can persuade even himself to remain true to it--neither he nor anyone else knows.