"Green, don't die on me! I can't lose you too.ً" Hamsa Tahir is free-willed, she's bold, she's stubborn. And she's a Muslim. Her parents were killed in the English invasion of their country, and ever since, she lived her life vehemently hating non-Muslims and all they stood for. Sebastian Walsh is cynical, he's arrogant, he's hotheaded. And he's an English man! Not just any English man; he's the son of the invader of Hamsa's land. His mother died at the hands of Muslims when he was young and he grew up with extreme loath for every Muslim's guts. After an unfortunate incident forces them together, no two people could hate each other more than these two do. But what happens when they find themselves forced to trust and help each other in order to survive?

They say belief is suicide. They're not wrong. Where I come from, faith gets you a bullet in the head, a knock at the door that never ends well, or a name etched on a list you'll never live to see. Still, I believe. So does Basil, my only constant in a world stripped of everything soft. We've been hunted for years, slept under stone, eaten from dirt, prayed in secret, and watched good people vanish for whispering the wrong words. We've made it all these years with nothing but our prayers and each other. But then came the rumor about a sanctuary. A lie, probably. A trap, almost definitely. Basil wanted to chase it anyway, because we owed it to ourselves, he said, and to the others who share our struggle. I went with him only because I couldn't bear to watch him go alone. I should've stopped him... But now it's too late. (Includes books one and two, in the Scarred Duology.)