Synopsis: Clockwork Wings (and Other Potential Explosives)

Childhood best friends Claire and Alexei spent six years apart: she to train as a member of the Royal Guard under the only guardian she's ever known, he to help pick up what few pieces could be found of his broken family. Now they've reunited under less than ideal circumstances: the queen has died suddenly and suspiciously, leaving behind a dangerously distraught king and a teenaged princess, once the third member of Claire and Alexei's circle, in need of protection.

The old friends jump at the chance to serve their princess as bodyguards, but she isn't the witty, impish, and vivacious girl they remember: somber and skeletal, Requiem rarely speaks--but for the oft-rumored screaming fits of madness, whispered to be the dark backlash of spectacular (and destructive) powers she may or may not have inherited from her mother, the Seer Queen.

Claire and Alexei quickly discover that the unbalanced princess doesn't need protection nearly as much as the rest of the castle, particularly her unwanted but persistent fiance-in-waiting, but with the help of a mysterious boy with a capital-G Gift for gadgetry, they might just keep the peace.

Unless, of course, there's someone gunning for their charge's crown.