Riana has learned how to stay out of trouble. She spends her days studying written texts in the government’s Office of Readers, and she spends her nights taking care of her sick sister. She always—always—follows the rules. Despite her low profile, she has mysteriously become a target. Someone has kidnapped her sister. Someone else is trying to kill her. And someone has sent a Soul-Breather to beguile her out of her secrets. Her help comes from the mythic leader of an underground rebel movement. A man who used to be her friend. A man who has silently loved her for years. He disappeared from her life without a word, and now he expects her to trust him again. Then there’s the Soul-Breather, a man who can taste her spirit with only a touch. He makes her feel things she’s never experienced before, but she doesn’t know if the feelings are real. Hired to deceive and betray her, he offers to help her instead. Without both men, she can’t rescue her sister. And she can’t discover the world-changing knowledge—buried in her memory—that has made her a target in the first place.

Until three months ago, Riana lived a safe, quiet life as a Reader for the Union government, but her life is no longer quiet or safe. She is now part of an underground rebellion, working closely with Connor, the covert leader of the movement and her best friend. Together, they’re trying to translate a mysterious book that might give them answers about the disaster that transformed their world. Union officials want to arrest them, and radical Zealots want to destroy them. And Mikel, her Soul-Breather boyfriend, wants Riana to stop putting herself in danger for a cause he doesn’t support. Then it gets even worse, when the Zealots start to frame them for violent acts of terrorism. Riana has to stay alive and juggle conflicting loyalties, deciding who to trust, where her heart lies, and what she really believes in.