A bruised stranger shoves an ancient book into Sasha Lancaster’s hands at the Boston Public Library. Hours away in Manhattan, her twin sister Sidney receives the same gift from the same impossible man. His only words: Burn it. Bury it. I’m free.

Too bad Sasha doesn’t listen.

Now the sisters are trapped in a dimension built from all of fiction, and at the mercy of Vile and Virtue, twin demigods forged from every villain and every hero ever written. Beautiful, ancient, and catastrophically bored, they’ve designed a game: throw the sisters into classic stories from Neverland to Wonderland, pit them against each other, best of three. Lose your lives, and you die for real. The only way both walk free? Tell them a story they’ve never heard.

No one has ever managed it.

Sasha is paired with Vile, a mind-reading nightmare who flirts like a poet and kills like an artist. Sidney lands with Virtue, a golden prince who can’t break his brother’s rules no matter how badly he wants to.

The monster wants her dead. He also wants her breathless. Sasha’s starting to wonder which one she’s more afraid of.