Eighteen-year-old Sasha Clems didn't mean to steal a seadragon's magic. Or err... More correctly, she did. She just didn't mean to get caught.
Sasha is tired of being poor. Tired of foreclosure notices tacked to her family's fridge, tired of working four jobs, tired of dreaming about college rather than attending.
When one morning she witnesses a dying seadragon expel its magic in the form of a basketball-sized jewel, she grabs it. The last time this happened, the jewel sold in the high nine-figures, but only after a kidnapping, three deaths, and an international manhunt by the Magic-Handlers' Alliance.
No reward without a little risk.
Sasha bolts off on a cross-country race to the single person she trusts to help auction off the jewel. Chasing her is the government, the Magic-Handler's Alliance, more dragons, and the hottest teenage magician on the face of the planet.
Even worse, the more Sasha discovers about the world of magic and the nature of the seadragon itself, the more she realizes there are things and people that just might be more important than money.
Maybe...? Because Sasha is
really
done with being poor.
It boils down to not just outracing her pursuers but confronting just how far she's willing to let her own moral compass slide.