Love is forbidden. Truth is dangerous. Survival is everything.

Ganymede’s is no ordinary boarding school. Behind its spiral towers and manicured lawns, boys are forged into the men society demands – strong, obedient, perfect. Graduate, and the world is yours: a home, a career, a wife. But fail… and you’re no longer useful to society.

For Dylan Cecil it should be simple: keep his head down, survive graduation, and earn his place. But when his friend, Blake, disappears, Dylan can’t silence the questions gnawing at him, even as whispers of danger shadow the school’s gilded halls.

As June’s trials close in – eight tests that will decide who is worthy of manhood – Dylan is haunted by Blake’s absence and drawn to Roman Edwards, a boy as magnetic as he is unknowable.

In a world rebuilt on order and obedience, Dylan must decide: will he become the man the academy wants – or the man he really is?