In this steampunk adventure, a teenage girl helps engineer a clockwork automaton only to uncover its dangerous true purpose.

Sometimes, even the most unlikely person can change the world.Seventeen-year-old Petra Wade, self-taught clockwork engineer, wants nothing more than to become a certified member of the Guild, an impossible dream for a lowly shop girl. Still, she refuses to give up, tinkering with any machine she can get her hands on, in between working and babysitting her foster siblings.When Emmerich Goss-handsome, privileged, and newly recruited into the Guild-needs help designing a new clockwork system for a top-secret automaton, it seems Petra has finally found the opportunity she's been waiting for. But if her involvement on the project is discovered, Emmerich will be marked for treason, and a far more dire fate would await Petra.Working together in secret, they build the clockwork giant, but as the deadline for its completion nears, Petra discovers a sinister conspiracy from within the Guild council . . . and their automaton is just the beginning.