Eli Dennick is a simple girl with a not-so-easy past who's just trying to survive life in the Waste, a barren stretch of gray desert she's called home for seventeen years. With a mother who's only half-crazed on a good day, an aging con artist of a gambler for an unlikely guardian, and outlaws on the lookout for them, it's a task easier said than done. Just when she's decided life can't possibly get any harder, in strolls the Bound, an outlandish stranger from a neighboring world, who's quick to teach her just how very wrong she is. Legend claims that the Bound are omens of death and destruction, and this particular Bound does not disappoint; after his arrival, she finds herself on the wrong side of the law, running for her life, her small town a smoking heap of rubble on the horizon. Yet all is not as it seems, and as she begins her arduous journey to Ae Cen, the Bound's home world, she discovers she's long been entangled in a web of lies. Questioning everything she's ever known--her mother's madness, her guardian's loyalty, even her own simple nature--she has no choice but to join forces with the Bound, their destination the infamous Compound of Ae Cen where she's convinced she'll find the answers she seeks. Little does she know, she'll get a hell of a lot more than she bargained for.