The first children take up arms.
The second children take up books.
The third children are taken.

Bryn Ruelle was never supposed to rank first. Yet there it was: her face, flashing across every scoreboard with 5:1 odds of winning. The top contender for the Long Night, the final test for the eldest daughters and sons of Durst. The Firstborn must prove they can take a life—or be exiled themselves. If they survive, they'll graduate into soldiers dedicated to defending their borders against their magic-wielding neighbors in Arcania. Bryn has never made a kill before tonight. But by dawn, someone will be dead by her hands.

In case she doesn't make it, she should say her goodbyes. To Asa, her brilliant younger brother, studying anti-magics at Midborn University. To little Wren, her odd duckling of a sister, soon to be taken away with the other Lastborn to a place from which none of the youngest children have ever returned. But Bryn has always known: key to their survival is loyalty to their class—to Dursti—before family.

Then Bryn finds an encryption revealing an Arcanist plot to kidnap the Lastborn, and she must discern if the threat to Wren is real—or a ruse to throw Bryn off her game before the Long Night. When her search for the truth forces her side-by-side with a traitor-born enemy, she risks everything she's trained for, and faces an impossible choice: her country, or her family? Her siblings, or herself?