Vita is the leader of a clandestine group of modern-day immortals able to channel Light, a mysterious substance with healing and destructive capabilities. Once a warrior queen, Vita now cloisters herself in a hidden palace, bored with her long life. This complacency shatters when she discovers a modern outsider—Jack Driver—born with power equal to her own. News of Jack invigorates a growing resistance to Vita’s rule, threatening the secret, fragile cohabitation of humans and immortals she’s fought to achieve.

Jack, a civil-rights activist in New York, knows nothing about Vita or her covert world. His childhood encounters with members of her army—resulting in his father’s death—led him to believe his Light was evil. In his final words to his father, he swore to forgo his powers and live a normal life, a promise he struggles to uphold.

When Vita and Jack meet, they experience an intense attraction, drawn together by their Light. Needing him by her side to quell revolution, Vita urges him to embrace his power, becoming the god he’s meant to be. But Jack refuses to join the army that’s hounded him. In fact, the more rebels he meets, the more sympathetic he is to their cause. Maybe it’s not the Light that’s corrupt; perhaps the corruption lies inside the woman he loves.