Mare is a teenage girl living in a village called The Stilts. She has different abilities than her siblings, including pickpocketing. After discovering she has silver-blooded abilities, Mare joins The Scarlet Guard to fight against silver oppression of reds. In the dystopian world of Red Queen, silvers are born with god-like powers and see reds as inferior, but Mare challenges this as a red with silver abilities. The class divide between reds and silvers parallels real-world struggles of the disenfranchised.