A world-shattering earthquake event.

 

A grand-scale ship hovering five miles above the destruction.

 

Twenty thousand onboard riding out the disaster.

 

Like all passengers on the Aureate, Aiza doesn’t remember her life before the day she was brought aboard. For years, she has struggled to understand why the Directive saved her, until the week of her eighteenth birthday, when she learns that she and a stranger have been chosen to rule the New World together when the ship grounds. But not all is as it seems inside this skyborne sanctuary. Just when Aiza and her newly betrothed are poised in the spotlight, their identities concealed by matching golden masks, she uncovers the catastrophic secret the Directive has been hiding. 

 

With every lie and injustice upon which their gilded refuge was built imminently threatening to surface, Aiza must find a way to expose their devious deliverers before they can frame her. But to free herself and the other passengers from their control, she’ll need allies from every floor, including the boy from the ship’s crew to whom she is indelibly drawn, who teaches her to believe in a future they’ll make for themselves someday. 

 

He’s hiding a secret of his own, though, and as tensions rise, Aiza must decide how much she’s willing to risk to win this war she’s waged, what she’ll sacrifice to bring the passengers back to the ground to face the truth they left buried below.