Cress

The novel opens as Queen Levana, the tyrannical ruler of Luna (Earth's moon), launches wolf-hybrid soldiers against 14 Earthen cities, killing 16,000 people. Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth agrees to marry Levana to halt the attacks, though he privately suspects she plans to murder him after her coronation and conquer the rest of Earth.

Cress, a young Lunar shell (a Lunar born without bioelectric manipulation powers), has spent seven years imprisoned on a satellite orbiting Earth. Her captor, Mistress Sybil Mira, a Lunar thaumaturge (a high-ranking official who serves the queen), has forced Cress to cloak Lunar ships from detection, enabling the attacks. Cress has secretly been protecting the Rampion, a stolen military cargo ship piloted by Linh Cinder, a Lunar cyborg fugitive who is also the lost Princess Selene, rightful heir to the Lunar throne. Aboard the Rampion, Cinder trains her bioelectric mind control with Wolf, a defected, genetically enhanced wolf-hybrid soldier, while Carswell Thorne, a charming ex-military deserter, and Scarlet Benoit, Wolf's companion, help plot to stop the royal wedding.

When the crew contacts Cress via a secret communication link, she agrees to provide surveillance evidence of Levana's espionage in exchange for rescue. However, Sybil arrives unexpectedly and discovers the communication. She beats Cress, ties her up, and lays a trap: when Thorne boards the satellite, Sybil captures him, programs the satellite to fall from orbit, and departs in his podship to attack the Rampion, leaving Thorne and Cress to die.

A violent confrontation erupts aboard the Rampion when Sybil and her guard Jacin Clay board the ship. Sybil uses her bioelectric powers to turn Wolf against Cinder. Scarlet shoots at Sybil, but Wolf intercepts the bullet, taking the hit in his chest; Jacin wounds Wolf with a separate shot beneath the shoulder blade. Sybil tricks Cinder with a glamour (a Lunar illusion altering perceived appearance) and escapes with Scarlet as a hostage. Jacin, wounded himself, declares his loyalty to his princess, and Cinder's built-in lie detector confirms he is truthful. Believing he has pledged allegiance to her as Princess Selene, Cinder decides to trust him and sets course for Africa to find Dr. Dmitri Erland, the Lunar scientist who helped her escape prison and is now hiding in the Saharan oasis town of Farafrah.

Meanwhile, Thorne frees Cress aboard the plummeting satellite. Cress hacks through Sybil's security code to deploy the emergency parachute just before atmospheric entry. They survive the crash in the Sahara, but Thorne discovers he has been blinded by a head injury. He cuts away Cress's enormously long hair, fashions makeshift shoes for her, and they trek across the dunes. Cress develops a fever, chases a devastating mirage, and in her delirium confesses she loves Thorne. He deflects with humor but promises to kiss her if she is truly dying, motivating her to keep walking. A desert caravan eventually rescues them.

In Farafrah, Cinder locates Erland, who performs emergency surgery on Wolf. Erland reveals that roughly 15 percent of the town consists of Lunar refugees who revere Cinder for defying Levana, and he argues she must go to Luna to claim her throne, because only a revolution can end Levana's reign. He warns that letumosis may be mutating, potentially threatening even Lunars.

Scarlet, brainwashed by Sybil, is taken to Luna and handed off to a wealthy family whose eight-year-old son tortures her with bioelectric illusions. She is brought before Levana's court, where she defiantly proclaims Cinder the true queen. When Scarlet refuses to reveal Cinder's location, Sybil forces Scarlet's own hand to bring a hatchet down on her pinky finger. Princess Winter, Levana's stepdaughter, intervenes to claim Scarlet as her pet, sparing her further mutilation, and secretly brings medicine disguised as candy.

On Earth, Kai secretly resumes searching for Princess Selene with his android assistant Nainsi and visits the palace labs, where he discovers Cinder's letumosis immunity and the ongoing cyborg draft, a policy forcing cyborgs into lethal plague testing. He abolishes the draft in a public press conference.

In the trading city of Kufra, Thorne wins an escort-droid in a card game, intending it as a new body for Iko, the Rampion's android personality. Cress misinterprets the scene as romantic betrayal and leaves with a caravaner named Jina, who kidnaps her and sells her to Erland in Farafrah for her blood. Thorne tracks Cress there, and a chaotic reunion brings the full group together. When authorities spot Thorne, soldiers surround the town, but the Lunar townspeople use their bioelectric powers to freeze every soldier, and the crew escapes. During this time, Jacin reveals his true loyalty lies with Princess Winter, not Cinder, correcting Cinder's earlier assumption.

The reunited crew plans to infiltrate New Beijing Palace on the wedding day. Cress will disable security with Wolf as her guard, Iko will smuggle herself in among an escort-droid delivery, Cinder will enter through secret tunnels beneath the palace, and Thorne will create a diversion in the research labs while Erland harvests Thorne's stem cells to synthesize a blindness cure. Cinder steals the real wedding invitations from her former stepmother, Linh Adri, using glamour to swap them for napkins.

On the wedding day, Cress disables the palace security system while Wolf dispatches guards. In the labs, Erland creates Thorne's eye solution but discovers a letumosis rash on his own wrist and activates a letumosis outbreak alarm as a diversion, drawing guards away from Cinder's location. Cinder and Iko reach Kai's chambers, where Cinder tranquilizes the guards, removes Kai's tracking chips, and sedates him. The crew then converges at the research wing, where Erland, now covered in rapidly spreading lesions, reveals through a quarantine window that the plague is a bioweapon manufactured by the Lunar crown. He calls Cress to the glass and, choking with emotion, reveals she is his biological daughter, taken from him as an infant. Cress, overwhelmed, can only manage a farewell before Cinder pulls her away.

On the rooftop, Sybil and six Lunar guards ambush the crew. Sybil turns Wolf against Cinder, and Iko is badly damaged trying to intervene. Thorne, still blind, kisses Cress, fulfilling his desert promise, then uses her as a targeting guide to shoot several guards. Cinder focuses all her power on Sybil's mind and destroys it, driving the thaumaturge permanently insane. With Jacin captured before the confrontation, Cinder talks Thorne through a rough takeoff. Sybil later throws herself from the rooftop.

Kai awakens aboard the Rampion, furious. After a heated argument, Cinder reveals she is Princess Selene. Kai is stunned but accepting, and they share their first kiss, interrupted when Cress reports that Levana has launched a full-scale invasion of Earth, specifically targeting Farafrah in retaliation. All six Earthen Union countries declare war. Levana confronts the dying Erland, who accuses her of engineering the plague; she freely admits the truth, knowing he will die before sharing it. Erland dies singing the lullaby he once sang to Cress. Cinder tells Kai she is going to Luna to start a revolution, and the novel ends as war engulfs Earth and the crew prepares to carry the fight to Luna.