Silver Elite

Silver Elite (2025) is dystopian romance by Dani Francis set 150 years after a world war released a toxin that caused psychic mutations among humankind. Those who experience such mutations are known as “Modifieds.” In the decades since the war, the world has split into factions. On the Continent, Primes, or non-Modified people, persecute the Modified through an authoritarian government called the Company, enforced by a military force called the Command. Persecuted Modifieds have banded together to form a resistance group called the Uprising, which is engaged in a long-standing, clandestine war against the Company.

When Wren Darlington’s adoptive uncle is revealed to be an Uprising operative and publicly executed, Wren is forcibly recruited into the Program, where she trains to become an elite Command soldier under the close watch of the General’s son Cross Redden. Meanwhile, she works secretly with the Uprising to make rank and get inducted into the Command’s highly selective Silver Elite squad, where the Uprising hopes to gain valuable intel to tear down the regime from within. What Wren doesn’t account for is falling in love with her superior and learning that both sides of the war are morally ambivalent. The novel explores themes of The Moral Ambiguity of Survival, The Isolation of Secrecy, and the harms that come from Perpetuating Cycles of Oppression.

This guide is based on the 2025 e-book edition published by Del Rey, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, suicide, and sexual assault.

Plot Summary

Wren Darlington, a powerful Mod (Modified human) born with psychic abilities due to a toxin dispersed during the last world war, has lived in secrecy since she lost her parents and was sent to live with a new guardian she calls Uncle Jim. Wren spends years hiding in the Blacklands and later at a ranch in Ward Z. The ranch secretly aids the Uprising by smuggling out Mods who are fleeing persecution by the Command, a militarized regime bent on eradicating all Aberrants (a derogatory term for Mods). Wren’s Mod abilities include telepathy, projection, mind reading, and the rare power of incitement (compulsion). Unlike others, her veins do not glow silver when she uses her gifts, making her a particularly dangerous and covert asset.

After a fleeting one-night stand with a Command soldier named Jordan, Wren draws attention to herself when she publicly shoots a wild animal to save a young child, impressing nearby witnesses with her marksmanship. When the Command visits her ranch to recruit her, they recognize her Uncle Jim as Julian Ash—a known member of the Uprising who deserted the Command 15 years prior. Uncle Jim is arrested and publicly executed despite Wren’s desperate attempt to incite the firing squad to lower their weapons. Her intervention fails, and she is arrested and interrogated. Jayde Valence, a powerful Mod and traitor working for the Command, attempts to read Wren’s mind but finds no incriminating information. Wren survives the mind probe by masking her thoughts.

Captain Cross Redden, son of the infamous General who rules the Continent, recruits her into the Command’s elite training Program, Silver Block, as a way to monitor her. Inside the Program, Wren is assigned to Black Cell alongside other recruits including Kaine, Lyddie, Kess, Ivy, Betima, Lash, Jones, and Cross’s half-brother Roe. She feels trapped and frightened, but she draws comfort from telepathic conversations with a fellow Mod she knows only by the codename “Wolf.” She has been communicating with Wolf since well before Uncle Jim’s execution, and she thinks of him as one of her few trusted friends. He knows her only as “Daisy.” He advises her that if she feels trapped, she should escape the trap by any means she can, noting that a trapped coyote will chew off its own leg to escape.

Though Wren attempts to fail out by sabotaging her own performance, Cross refuses to expel her. Over time, she navigates a growing attraction to Captain Cross. The stakes of her place in the program and her proximity to the General’s son are heightened when Wren witnesses increasing brutality within the Program. Roe murders Betima, a fellow recruit and covert Uprising operative, when he suspects that she is a Mod. Wren purposefully injures herself, hoping to be dismissed from the program, but is foiled when Cross brings in an enslaved Mod healer. Wren is telepathically contacted by Adrienne, a leader in the Uprising, who recruits her to replace Betima. She is tasked with infiltrating the Silver Elite—the most elite group of soldiers in the Command—for highly classified intel. Wren begins excelling in her training to secure a place, though Cross manipulates her scores. She eventually blackmails him into letting her prove herself. When the top candidates from the Program are chosen, Wren qualifies for Silver Elite but must fight a recruit named Bryce to secure one of six available slots. She accidentally kills Bryce when neither is willing to tap-out. Wren begins a covert relationship with Cross but is unable to fully trust him, making their relationship complicated.

Wren’s new assignment as a Silver Elite involves working with her fellow soldiers to track Jasper Reed, a smuggler linked to the Faithful—a separatist group holding Old Era beliefs. On the mission to Ward C, Wren discovers a hospital filled with Mods whose minds are “fractured” under the strain of their abilities, resulting in loss of lucidity. They are being experimented on. Afterward, Wren’s team is pulled to aid Cross’s team in her hometown of Hamlett, where her best friend, a Mod named Tana, and Tana’s father, Griff, are being detained. Wren negotiates to spare their lives by convincing them to reveal information about Uprising tunnel locations. The tunnel locations are revealed, and Tana and Griff are sent to labor camps instead of being executed. A trip to Cross’s childhood home introduces Wren to Cross’s mother, Vinessa, who appears to be mentally “fractured” like the patients at the hospital in Ward C. She suspects his mother is a Mod despite Cross’s objections. A painting in his mother’s room looks exactly like a view that Wolf—her anonymous Mod friend she’s been telepathically communicating with through childhood—has described several times. Wren begins to suspect Cross is Wolf. After confirming this theory during an intimate confrontation, they reveal their identities to each other and form a deeper bond.

During a later mission, an Uprising ambush results in the death of several Silver Elites, including Wren’s best friend, Kaine, and the Lieutenant Xavier Ford’s girlfriend, Tyler Struck. Wren is not informed of the operation and is devastated by the loss. She confronts Adrienne and learns that she was excluded intentionally. Soon after, Wren reveals her full history and powers to Cross, including her incitement ability, the bloodmark her uncle tried to erase, and her healed Mod scars. Wren and Cross are brought closer by the vulnerability.

Adrienne, the Uprising leader, instructs Wren to plant explosives during the Silver Jubilee, a high-profile Command celebration. While doing so, she is confronted by Jayde Valence, who attempts to read Wren’s mind again. However, even without succeeding, Jayde has confirmed that Wren is a powerful Mod working for the Uprising. To escape capture, Wren uses her power of incitement to force Jayde to shoot and kill herself. Cross covers for her and helps conceal the incident. However, when Lyddie later walks in on Wren dressing for the Jubilee and sees her Mod birthmark, she reports Wren to Roe, resulting in her arrest.

After the Jubilee is bombed and Adrienne mentally “fractures” General Redden with an unheard-of ability, Travis Redden seizes power and declares war on all Mods. Cross aids Wren’s escape from the stockade with Xavier Ford’s help. While Cross intends to stay undercover at his brother’s side, he sends Wren and Xavier into the Blacklands, a forbidding desert they’ll need to cross to reach the secret Modified base called Dagger, where their allies in the coming war await. In the wooden shack within the Blacklands where Wren spent years of her childhood with Uncle Jim, she discovers a hidden note from Jim revealing that her biological parents were responsible for a deadly attack on Mods, betraying the Uprising. The news destabilizes Wren’s identity and sense of purpose, as she always believed her parents were loyal to Mods and died serving the Uprising.

Wren and Xavier eventually reach the edge of the Blacklands, where they’re retrieved by Uprising forces. Kaine is among them, very much alive. He reveals himself as Grayson Blake, a renowned pilot for the Uprising. Wren protests, but Xavier Ford is taken into custody until the Uprising can decide whether to trust him. They board the helicopter bound for Dagger.