Who can you trust when your life is a lie?

Ten-year-old Roslyn Carver longs for something better than the childhood she's spent largely underground. Though raised in the heart of the Arcanum and surrounded by the greatest wizards in the world, she dreams of a future elsewhere.

Still, Ros knows too well what dangers lurk beyond the Arcanum's thick walls and strong wards. Only the grand magus is powerful enough to keep the murderous creatures of Faerie at bay?the creatures who left her an orphan and killed hundreds more before they were driven back to their realm. But every time she hops onto her bicycle, Ros fights the urge to ride as far as her legs can carry her, away from the stifling Arcanum and her distant, often disapproving grandparents. For now, however, her only respite comes with sleep: her visits to the kindly man in the stone-walled room, the recurring dreams that seem curiously real.

But Ros's world is about to change. Old enough to begin her formal instruction in magic, she soon learns much more than the Arcanum had planned?secrets that call into doubt everything she's ever known about her place in the world.

Ros isn't an orphan at all. She's a hostage.

And if she wants to escape the Arcanum, she'll have to fight for her freedom.