In Seemos, magic is power. The Nine Bishops, the king's living weapons, are its masters. Those born without it serve it, and never will have it. They are called Filth.

Mika is Filth. She scrubs and hauls for mages who will never learn her name, and she hides the one crime that would see her branded. She reads. Every stolen page is a step toward the east, where a Filth who can read might live like a person.

Then her blood wakes, people die, and the truth she was never told comes with it. Her family was erased. Her power should not exist. And the mages who did it still rule.

Reaching them means the Selection of Sixteen, a tournament fought to the death for a seat among the Nine. To take her revenge, Mika must master a power she does not understand to become the thing she hates most. One of the Nine Bishops.