Seventeen-year-old April Parker wakes up in an underground facility, a shock bracelet on her wrist and a five-day countdown on the clock. Dozens of other teens share her inexplicable fate, but their unseen captors never intervene no matter how brutal conditions become. When the ruthless - and unnervingly magnetic - Marcus seizes control, April's trauma-forged instinct is to lay low. But protecting her friends drives her to bargain with the boy she should fear most - a boy whose reality fractures with every tick. Then the countdown ends, and the real terror begins. Powers ignite. Alliances shatter. And predators are born. And with a saboteur among them determined to keep the doors closed forever, escaping what comes next may be the only way to survive it.

Seventeen-year-old Zelene had never believed in magic or prophecies; until the day she was attacked by an assassin with unnatural powers. Now, her life has been thrust into a war between two worlds she knows nothing about and told that she must fight against an enemy determined to snuff out her existence-all because of some ancient prophecy that claims five girls from her bloodline will unite and end the war between the worlds. As their enemies strike, the girls are forced to flee back to their home world after being hidden away for so long. There, Zelene meets Rhaya, Terrena, and Isauria and discovers the familial bonds tying them together and to the powerful Duillaine who rule over the worlds. Zelene sees this connection as a prison rather than protection and can think of a place or two she'd like to shove the crown she supposedly inherited. When she learns Ariana, her long-lost twin sister, has been captured by the rebels, Zelene's attitude changes. With whispers of Ariana being the sacrifice needed to fulfill the prophecy, Zelene knows she has to act. She doesn't know how she is supposed to go against an army of magic-wielding rebels when her own ability to manipulate the elements is still locked within her. But can she trust the Duillaine to rescue Ariana when it seems their medieval politics are what brought about the war in the first place? With all that is at stake, the answer becomes clear to Zelene. Screw the worlds. She's getting her sister back.