Book excerpt: When 18-year-old Rose arrives in Temnota from the US as an exchange student, she finds the country even more oppressive than she thought. The Secret Service has just imprisoned Libera, a young rebel leader. A shape-shifter, she can escape by taking any form, so they’ve locked her away in a cell impenetrable to her kind, and are about to execute her. Rose teams up with her classmate, Gavrilo, the prince of all shape-shifters, to find a way to unlock Libera’s cell to save her. According to a legend, such a way existed a long time ago. Rose takes Gavrilo back to the past to find it. A Secret Service Major, an evil genius of shifters, stands in their way. Rose and Gavrilo fall for each other, but she has a disease that prevents them from touching. Will they beat the death clock and save the country and their love?