Chapter One

Briar Blackwood wasn't supposed to survive.

After the slaughter of her pack, she's sent to a war academy built to train the next generation of fighters against the Hollowed—the creatures that have kept their world locked in a brutal war for generations.

Briar has spent her life surviving on instinct, violence, and a healthy disregard for authority. The academy expects discipline. Briar has other ideas.

Then there's Riven Ashcroft.

Known as Machine One, Riven is one of the genetically engineered weapons created to fight the Hollowed: powerful, dangerous, and far too interested in the new girl who doesn't behave the way anyone expects her to.

But something about Briar doesn't add up.

As training turns deadly and buried secrets begin clawing their way to the surface, Briar discovers the war she's been taught to fight may have been built on lies—and the truth about what happened to her pack is tangled with the very experiments that created Riven.

Everyone at the academy is being trained to become a weapon.

Briar is beginning to wonder if she already is one.