She has terrifying nightmares. She blabbers in a lost language. She can’t remember her parents’ faces.

Leela knows she has always been a misfit in Amarashtra, the Immortal Nation where everything can be bought and sold—including food, water, the right to life, and the dignity of the dead.

The old country of Yakri was transformed by its Supreme Minister Vikas Chandra Purushottam, or VCP, after a civil war called the Liberation. Twenty-five years later, Amarashtra is at its pinnacle of opulence. But it is stalked by a crisis. The old enemies of the Nation, the Anakshis, are back. Terrorist attacks and a high-profile murder drive Amarashtra to the brink of war.

Leela, however, has her own problems to deal with, which include her apparently-perfect marriage to one of the most powerful men in the Nation: Taksh Rajguna, her adoptive father’s son and the present Chief Technical Officer of...