One wrong move, and everything burns.

Nineteen-year-old Max was born cursed. After the Fallen claimed dominion over the earth, Max was one of the few Tainted individuals who were allowed sanctuary in one of the small underground units of the Resistance. But since she's only one stage away from losing herself to bloodlust, she knows the Resistance is counting down to the day when she becomes too dangerous to keep alive.

On the eve of her twentieth birthday, she attempts the only thing that might spare her life?defecting to the surface above. However, when her escape attempt goes awry, her world is broken open as she encounters something impossible: A holy angel, one of the good guys, long thought extinct. The encounter stabilizes Max's curse and abruptly shifts her value within the Resistance.

Rather than being executed, Max is given a single chance at survival?go undercover in enemy territory. Failure means death. Success means protecting the one person she cannot live without?Alex, her childhood friend and the love she's never allowed herself to claim.

But the territory is a place few return from, and the Fallen have a new king. Ruthless, calculating, and obsessed with eradicating the Resistance, his rise exposes secrets that threaten to upend everything Max believes about her lineage, her curse, and why she's always been treated as expendable. As alliances fracture and Max's bond with Alex shifts from a source of strength into a dangerous liability, one truth becomes impossible to ignore: In a world where the Resistance is riddled with traitors and the Fallen weaponize lies, there are no second chances.

After years of being ostracized and used as a tool, Max becomes the linchpin for the future of humankind?Tainted and untainted alike.