TIMESTAMP: November 3, 7999. 4:27 p.m.

September Morningstar did not make sense.

Imogen watched curiously as September scanned the woods around them. They were supposed to be looking for sixteen-year-old Marya Kuzmitch, who was last seen three days ago hiking along this rural trail at the base of Mount Vexation, but Imogen allowed herself to get distracted by the simple fact that the girl she always seemed to get paired up with on searches was, quite frankly, odd.

First, there was her general appearance. September had pearly white skin and tiny hands. She had silvery-white hair that fell in a sleek, straight curtain that in the right light appeared to glow. She barely cleared five feet standing on her toes, and big doe eyes in a teal jewel tone that Imogen had to admit were positively gorgeous. Looking at her from a distance, you’d think she looked like a princess in a fairy tale with simple lace dresses and stockinged feet, until you got closer and realized this princess is anything but pure of heart. Imogen remembered vividly the one time anyone had dared try to pick her up: Jeptha Jenkins held her upside-down, and she’d bit his leg so hard he had to go to the hospital, thus earning herself the nickname Anklebiter.

Then there was the dog. It was a shepherdy looking thing with fur the same color as September’s hair, and she refused to go anywhere without it.

“If Hester likes you, I like you,” she’d once said, as if that was all the explanation she needed. “And her judgment has never once been wrong.”

Hester didn’t like Imogen all too much.

Actually, the dog didn’t like just about anyone. Sure, she never growled, but she also never wagged her tail or barked in the way happy dogs do. Even now, Hester simply stuck her nose to the ground, keeping close to September. Come to think of it, Imogen couldn’t remember a time when September or the dog ever appeared to run out of breath. Or eat. Or blink.

As she called out Marya’s name, she followed September and had a sudden ridiculous thought: was September…? No. She shook her head. Ridiculous. Laughable. Absurd. She couldn’t be an angel. Angels probably weren’t real, instead simply products of the overactive imaginations of the novelists and playwrights of her mother’s home country, Svetolina. Angels existed in the same fairy tale forests that pond mermaids and vampires and the Eternal Princess of Jazira Mukha liked to hang out.

Besides, if the girl next to her were an angel, Imogen, Hester, and any human within a ten-

mile radius would already be dead.

“I have a theory Marya wasn’t taken,” September said suddenly. Every time she spoke, the trees and clouds seemed to slow in their movements as if to hear her better. She talked with the prim and proper accent of the highest classes, though Imogen had heard that she’d worked as a cashier in a thrift store before joining the Rose. She wondered if she ever missed life before Celestial’s unofficial search and rescue organization had offered her a position. Imogen certainly didn’t.

“Oh yeah? Why would a girl who could get any material possession she could ever want with the snap of her fingers run off to live …here?” The two were just one pair of about ten; several other people had gone missing on Mount Vexation besides Marya.

“Call it a hunch.”

Imogen raised her eyebrows, but September wasn’t looking, instead peering into the trees to their right. “Uh huh.”

But she humored September anyway, because odd though she was, September almost always found who they were looking for. Sure, the target might be dead, or two thousand miles away in southern Alhaaya. But nine times out of ten, she found them.

Hester tilted her head to the right. September beckoned Imogen closer, pointing to the grass. “See that? Marya went that way. There’s footprints, but they show no signs of a struggle.”

Sure enough, there was a faint trail of trampled grass and bent tree branches that Imogen never would have seen otherwise. Call September weird or unfriendly or vaguely creepy all you want, she got the job done. Imogen started forward, but September put a hand up. “Hold on. There’s not one set of footprints, but two. She left the trail to meet someone, then followed them.”

“Somebody else who’s missing?”

“Maybe.”

September led the way cautiously, checking the ground for prints every few feet. The woods darkened, the sun blocked by broad-leafed branches of mossy trees each more twisted and gnarled than the last. Imogen loved the woods in general as much as anyone else, but Celestial’s rural mountain range was surrounded in the south by a swath of forest sixty miles across, lovingly referred to by the locals as simply The Wood. And these same locals, as well as anyone who visited, knew without a doubt that The Wood was alive. And it sure as hell didn’t care if you were, too.

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Imogen Campione did not make sense.

As they followed the footprints Marya Kuzmitch had made, September watched her assigned partner out of the corner of her eye. Long black hair, warm brown skin, heart-shaped face. Twenty-four, five foot seven, one hundred fifty-eight pounds, mostly muscle that she kept hidden under a navy blue Crown-issued coat that somebody had taken the logos off. It was this very coat that made September wary of Imogen, despite the average Score on her badge.

Every citizen

of Celestial was required a Score. To get one, you had to go to the local government facility and perform hours-long, exhaustive tests on your individual beauty, intellect, and physical health. Days later, you’d be given a badge in the color of your choosing engraved with three numbers, zero through nine. Add up those numbers and there’s your Score. 24 to 27, and congratulations. You are placed in A Tier, and your assigned color is blue, the rarest of pigments. Blue Tier gets almost everything you could ask for. Best jobs, best houses, best hospitals, schools, doctors… of course, you’d be required to get married to another A Tier and have at least one biological child under threat of jail time, but other than that everything’s blue skies and sunshine. The Glorious President thanks you!

23-20, B Tier. Not bad. Your color is purple, and you still get the best picks of everything, unless somebody in A Tier wants it first. You’re pressured but not required to have a child. Considered by many the true best place to be.

19-16, C Tier. This is where most (white) people end up. The color is green, and you’re mostly left alone by the government, unless you’re poor. Life for you will probably be modest, but comfortable.

15-12, D Tier. There is a significant drop in privileges here. You are most likely hovering right above the poverty line. The color is red, and if you live in the capital city, there are many neighborhoods you aren’t even allowed to walk past. The test is required at age 12. Middle schoolers in D, E, and F are required to learn modern makeup techniques to cover themselves up. You are not allowed more than three children. Under punishment of death.

11-8, E Tier. Orange. You are not allowed into the capital city. If you’re arrested, you won’t be given a lawyer. You’ll be lucky to get a managerial position; you’ll never be allowed to own a business. You are not allowed more than one biological child, and that child may be taken from you at any moment by the government if they feel you won’t raise them to be proper little pawns for the Glorious President to control.

7-0. F Tier. Yellow. You have barely any rights as a Celestial citizen. The Glorious President does not care whether you live or die. You’d better live within crawling distance of an apothecary or a very kind medical professional working out of his own pocket, because you won’t be allowed in any hospital or doctor’s office. Basically, if you don’t have a loving family in a higher Tier, you’re fucked. You will be forcibly sterilized. For you, the concept of following your dreams does not exist.

A few streets down from the store September used to work, a mural of a rainbow over a map of the country was painted on a brick wall. The yellow of the rainbow had been switched out for white.

Those were the general castes of this country, but there existed two other categories. Financial class was often considered the secret Score, with the richest often bribing the authorities into getting the highest Scores. The Glorious President took the system very seriously and cheating it was, on paper, punishable by death, but bribery never seemed to get reported. You could see it happening, though. The CEO with a perfectly shiny head and bulbous nose. The cotton baroness with cataracts sporting a shiny blue badge.

And the final way Celestial had of pitting its citizens against each other: X Tier. This isn’t a state secret, in fact every school taught about this, usually as a warning to get kids to behave. X Tier was reserved for those convicted of treason, as well as anyone deemed unnatural and dangerous. Anyone legally declared X Tier was from then on living on borrowed time. Rewards were given to those who killed them.

Half the people in the Rose could be found guilty and shot on sight, if the Crown ever got smart and found out that not one of them cared about the caste system. They were recruited specifically because of it.

Celestial had three branches of justice: the Sword, which governed only the military; the Shield, which existed to protect the higher classes; and the Crown, created to keep the lower classes in line. September hadn’t had much experience dealing with the Sword or Shield, but she had plenty of personal reasons for disliking the Crown and anyone remotely associated with them. Adding on to that, you and I both know September was an extreme empath. She didn’t need to see a frown or furrow of the brow to know exactly how a person was feeling, because she felt those emotions almost as if they were her own. September had gathered a lot of emotions from Imogen: righteous anger, caring gentleness, and an almost childlike curiosity. But all of these carried underneath them an undercurrent of intense secrecy. There were already rumors of a spy within the Rose. Sure, the Rose had its own spies watching the Crown, but still. A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within.

The staircase appeared as if out of nowhere.

The steps were of rusted metal once painted white, and spiraled up beyond the tree branches. She couldn’t see past to where it led, but it probably stopped into nothing. This was a somewhat common sight, especially out this deep into the Wood. It was probably the last remnants of some long abandoned structure, waiting to rot along with the building it came in, though nothing near it looked manmade. But still, Imogen and September gave each other a look and moved on, not quite turning their backs on it.

Nobody really knew why they were so common. This was an area people didn’t frequent enough to build anything here.

Ten minutes later, they reached the top of the hill.

Hester stuck her nose to the ground, whacking her tail against Imogen’s calf. The hill sloped into a steep, grassy slide, and at its bottom lay a heap of flesh and blood. September could see from here the body had been torn to shreds, but she recognized blonde hair, painted toenails, and a satin periwinkle nightgown. They’d found their target.

Hester pawed the ground, getting their attention. September knelt by her paws, picking up what the dog had found. She instantly understood what had happened here.

“Marya didn’t go willingly at all. She was Commanded to by an angel.”

“Excuse me?”

September turned and held up her hand, showing her find: a mint-green flight feather the size of her forearm. “This doesn’t belong to any bird.”

“You said Commanded, what do you mean by that?” Imogen examined the feather so as not to have to look at Marya Kuzmitch’s body.

September knelt over the corpse and held her breath. She’d been dead for at least twelve hours. Flies buzzed around the poor girl’s head, which hung onto her neck with only a thin flap of skin. One landed on her glassy eye; September half expected her to blink it away. “Commands are final. They are vocal orders that can’t be resisted. When the angel told her to follow it, her entire thought process was rewritten so that all she wanted to do was follow. I’d say this was the work of a Seraph.”

“Since when were you an expert on angels?” Imogen asked, incredulous to the whole thing.

“I…used to hunt them,” she replied. It wasn’t entirely untrue. She stood up, looking down on Marya’s body with pity. This girl had a Score of 23. She had everything, and yet. “She never stood a chance.”

Imogen still wasn’t sure she believed September, but didn’t have any other explanations. What Imogen didn’t know was that angels frequented Celestial, and if caught would be labeled X Tier.

What Imogen also didn’t know was that September actually was one of them.