A snarky seventeen-year-old must team up with an enigmatic criminal to cure herself of dangerous forbidden magic in the first book of a new fantasy duology from the New York Times bestselling author of the Falling Kingdoms series.

Josslyn Drake, former First Daughter of Ironport, doesn't know much about magic. She only knows that it's dangerous, rare, and completely illegal. So when she's infected by a mysterious piece of magic confiscated from Lord Banyon, one of the most infamous criminals alive, Joss's life turns upside down.

She begins to have visions, not of the future, but of the past—Banyon’s past. All Joss wants is for things to go back to normal, but the cost for doing magic is death, and there’s nobody she can trust to help her. So when wanted criminal and blackheart Jericho Nox offers her a deal, a way to extract the magic and give it to him instead, she's forced to accept.

Joss isn’t thrilled to be working with a blackheart, especially one as infuriating—and infuriatingly handsome—as Jericho. But as she sees more of the world outside of her pampered life in the city, and as she steps into more and more of Banyon’s memories, she begins to question her longest held beliefs—beliefs about right and wrong, about her world, and about herself. In an empire built on lies, seeing the truth may be her greatest weapon.