"I am small, and I am weak - but I have always been the best liar." Gwendolyn 'Wyn' Greer has never been brave, no matter how hard her brother pushed her. She has always been insignificant and overly emotional, too worried about the feelings of those around her, and in a world with no government to shield her, this is a problem. She cannot hunt, nor can she fight to protect her makeshift family, so she helps them the only way she can: she uses her emotions. At her brother's insistence, she convinces strangers to take her in, only to steal their food the minute they look the other way. No one has ever caught her before, but her luck is not everlasting. When a man finds her stealing a loaf of bread, he forces her to join his ever-growing collection of 'lost' teenagers - a collection he lovingly refers to as the Potentate. Wyn's first goal is to escape and return to her surrogate mother and siblings, but with each passing second, she finds herself drawn closer and closer to the sinister secrets at the heart of the Potentate. She may want to go home, but even a naive girl like her knows she needs to survive first.