Fifteen-year-old Janai, a healer's apprentice from a planet called Kritine, volunteers to lead others to freedom. Along the journey, she finds she's attracted to a boy from her homeworld, but now is not the time to bond with a life-mate. She must remain strong as she fights to overcome old and new enemies that don't want her to find freedom.

Will she succeed? Or is the free-zone merely a fanciful story spread by desperate children? Janai risks her life to find out.