Its and seventeen-year-old Verity Newton lands a job in New York as a governess to a wealthy leading family--but she quickly learns that the family has big secrets Magisters have always ruled the colonies but now an underground society of mechanics and engineers are developing non-magical sources of power via steam engines that they hope will help them gain freedom from British rule The family Verity works for is magister--but it seems like the childrens young guardian uncle is sympathetic to the rebel cause As Verity falls for a charming rebel inventor and agrees to become a spy she also becomes more and more enmeshed in the magister familys life She soon realizes shes uniquely positioned to advance the cause--but to do so shell have to reveal her own dangerous secret.
