BOOK ONE IN THE BESTSELLING STAINED SERIES: Seventeen-year-old Julia is finally living the good life. She's traded a hard cot in a Memphis orphanage for her very own room in a perfect little house, on a perfect little street, with a perfect set of parents who picked her to be their daughter. But Julia is hiding a secret--and one fall night, she returns home to find that her secret has found her. Her forever home is ashes. Her parents are gone. And, in the sky above the flames, a winged creature hunts her. The Nephilim King, Samyaza, has taken everything from Cayne. After struggling in the darkness, for years, to reassemble his broken life, Cayne is finally ready to confront his past and avenge the loss of everything he loved. He tracks Samyaza to a Memphis warehouse, where he winds up flat on his back, in the healing hands of a beautiful, dark-haired girl he doesn't need to know. Unbeknownst to either of them, they are already linked. Cayne's secret past holds the answers to Julia's future. But what will be more dangerous to her? Evading the bounty placed on her head by the leaders of two Celestial realms, or giving her soul to a man who is bound, by birth, to damage it?