Garden of Ashes — Kathryn Lee Martin

Having survived Rondo's destruction, sixteen-year-old Rags has been taken captive by the Kingdom and sentenced to 'rehabilitation' at the Kingdom's Threshing Floor, a notorious prison camp for hardened criminals. Those who refuse to serve the Kingdom go in...no one comes out. Faced with this nightmarish reality, Rags is forced to use everything she knows as a rustler to survive against starvation, a cruel ward master, and torture at the hands of the Kingdom's ruler, Hyperion. Given only two options--death, or conformation to the Kingdom's ways--she's forced to play the Kingdom's twisted game.With the help of the Kingdom's second-in-command, Henrick Oreson, and its charismatic luresman, Colton Caelan Fieldson, Rags must find a way to play a convincingly false role she was never meant to play and show the Kingdom she can be 'rehabilitated' to its standards. But with the deciding evaluation rigged in the Kingdom's favor, failure is imminent...unless she can find a way to turn lies into truth and achieve the impossible: actually, escape the Threshing Floor.