Power, recognition, wealth - now in Britain all this is available only to those few who are endowed with a magical Gift from birth. For the rest, nothing has changed... except that every plebeian must give ten years of his life to the aristocrats.

Not everyone is given the opportunity to survive a ten-year period, and none of those who survive will recover from the suffering that befell him.< /p>

The world of the “Golden Cage” is gloomy and cruel. In it, an endless abyss separates the family of the all-powerful Jardines and the family of commoners Hadley. But their destinies will intertwine in the most fatal way, when the children of some become the powerless property of others.