After she has served a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, Crown Prince Dorian offers eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien her freedom on the condition that she act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Lord Cassia is taken prisoner, while a plague sweeps over the land. Three years later, he wants only to return to his home. Meanwhile, his home has changed, and an assassin has targeted the queen.

In a future world where teenagers are taken, imprisoned, and forced to fight for their survival, well-behaved Cassie will do whatever it takes to save her rebellious twin sister from Death Row.

"Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last ten years fighting for survival in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer. When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal: a series of elemental challenges against the torments of air, fire, water, and earth, assigned to only the most dangerous of criminals. Then a coded message...