The Empire counts every life in the Ledger. Every birth. Every name. Every flame.
Taniel was never counted.
By law, he does not exist. He was never entered in the Ledger—no name, no record, no flame the system can count. He remains Unlit. It is the only reason he is still alive.
Then a dying man presses a forbidden message into the flame-lines of Taniel's flesh—a brand of living fire that will kill whoever carries it the moment it is drawn out. Now the boy who was never counted is the most wanted thing in the world. Because if he survives, he becomes the bearer of a power the Empire has spent two thousand years trying to control, and failing.
Only one person can keep him alive long enough to become what everyone fears. A laundry girl marked by a single white strand of hair no one alive can read—and a personal history even she doesn't know yet. She is the answer to what he is becoming.
What neither of them knows is that this has happened before. That the last time a flame like his rose, it broke the world. And that she—or what she carries—was there.
And last time, she failed.
