Tonight, seventeen-year-old Evalee is scheduled to die.
She's planned her celebration for weeks, and other than leaving her sister Gracelyn behind, she's ready. The Directorate says this is how it should be, and she trusts them, as all its citizens do. So tonight she dresses up, she has a party, and she dances. Then she goes to sleep for the last time . . . except, the next morning, Evalee wakes up.
Gracelyn is a model Directorate citizen with a prodigious future ahead. If she could only stop thinking about the shuffling from Evalee's room on her departure morning. Even wondering if something went wrong is treasonous enough to ruin her. If she pulls at the thread, the entire careful life the Directorate set for her could unravel into chaos.
Swept away by rebels, Evalee must navigate a future she didn't count on in a new, untidy world. As the Directorate's lies are stripped away, she becomes determined to break Gracelyn free from its grasp-before Gracelyn's search for the truth proves her to be more unruly than she's worth to the Directorate.