In a gloomy, smoke-filled world where the sun has vanished, all light and warmth comes from the firestones mined underground by the Quelled – a people branded by the race known as Chosen.

On her sixteenth birthday, the rebellious Quelled girl Elsha is selected as handmaid to the Firelord – the most powerful of the Chosen. Suddenly Elsha is swept into a world of privilege, but also of prejudice and hatred and inequality. And her pursuit of her vision of a world of warmth, as sung about in the ancient myths, leads her on a dangerous path...