The Queen Trials

I never wanted to join the Queen Trials. But I’m not a victim and never have been. When a peacekeeper attacks me in a mine shaft, I fight back and win. Sort of. Because I made a mistake. I let him live. He knows my name. He’ll come after me, and he’ll kill the only person I love: my sweet, clueless brother Shellor. Nobody escapes from Locality Fourteen. There was only one way out that would protect us both: Enter the Queen Trials and become a star. Now, I’m plunged into a competition with dozens of gorgeous women from all over the kingdom.

Against enormous odds, Clio Fathom has advanced to the next round of The Queen Trials, along with dozens of other women and girls... some of whom are already making plans to kill her. But first comes The Wishing Round, where three winners will receive the ultimate prize: the chance to make one wish, which King Ergondy is bound by duty to grant...whether he wants to or not.

Thrown into the Wishing Well, Clio must find three keys while fighting to stay alive in a nine-square grid of fear. Whether she wins or loses the round, her wish will be read aloud. Clio knows that if she holds three keys when King Ergondy learns what she wished for, her wish will have to be granted.

All Princess Clio has wanted since she joined the Queen Trials was to find a way out of the competition before the killing round began. But when King Ergondy grants her wish, Clio learns more about the Forever War than she bargained for.

Clio has learned a horrible truth. Now, what will she do with the knowledge? She has always planned to escape The Queen Trials ahead of the killing round. She doesn't want to be a queen, she just wants to survive. But if she chooses survival, can she live with herself? Clio has always been destined for more. She just didn't know how much she would be asked to give.

It's halfway through the Top Twenty, and Princess Clio has successfully faked her own death. What will she discover as she moves unseen through the mall, waiting for her chance reenter the Trials at the beginning of The Top Ten? And when she does reveal she survived what the Rotunda thought was an excruciating death, is there something even more sinister in store for her?