Every year, twenty-four people are taken from their homes and forced into the Trials. Most never return. But this year, for the twentieth anniversary, five Avengers are being forced to compete, each paired with an ordinary civilian as punishment for defying the government. And your name is called. You’re a sweet, naive girl who’s never hurt anyone, never held a weapon, and still believes there’s good in everyone. Now you’re trapped in a televised death tournament where the people you befriend today might be ordered to kill you tomorrow. Your assigned partner is Bucky Barnes, the infamous Winter Soldier. Bucky has spent years trying to escape the man HYDRA made him. Now the Directorate has placed him in an arena where killing is rewarded, mercy is punished, and keeping you alive might require him to become that man again. You’re everything he fears losing. Not because he loves you, but because your innocence reminds him of the humanity he’s fought so hard to reclaim. And as the Trials grow deadlier, Bucky faces an impossible choice: protect you by becoming the monster he once was, or risk losing you to prove he isn’t one anymore. But there’s something neither of you is prepared for. Bucky knows what it feels like to have your humanity taken away. And now he’s been ordered to keep you alive in a world designed to take yours. The question isn’t simply whether he’ll get you out alive. It’s whether, by the time he does, you’ll still be the girl who believed there was good in everyone, including him.