Nesta believes in the fairy tales - the true stories of powerful magical women who shaped and ruled the world decades ago.

But the world has changed since then, and now, she is forbidden from wandering too far from the isolated woodland cottage where she lives with her grandmother. Nesta longs more than anything to see the city that lies beyond the forest, and when her grandmother is abducted, she gets her chance, journeying there in the hope of rescuing her.

But once there, she is horrified to see her grandmother's warnings were true: girls are forced to wear certain clothes and punished if they don't behave in certain ways. The city's Authorities have rewritten history, replacing the fairytale heroines with weak girls who must rely on men.

Worse still - everyone believes this is how the world has always been.

Only Nesta knows the truth. But truth is a dangerous thing, and suddenly she finds herself a target. Can she evade the Authorities long enough to rescue her grandmother and liberate everyone else, bringing magic back into the world?