It was the worst day of my life and the start of a new one.

I escaped just in time to cast the spell I need for the admissions interview. Summoning a familiar should have opened the doors to my future...but instead of a loyal companion, I conjured an Aos Sí: a high fae of ruthless power, and a devastatingly handsome male who’d sooner carve my heart out than bow to a human. Still, he demanded we seal a contract before vanishing, leaving me with a corpse at my feet, blood on my hands, and the cops closing in as my one chance at the elite Order Academy slipped through my trembling fingers.

The Academy is my best hope of taming the magic that crackles beneath my skin and uncovering the truth hidden in my father’s legacy. If I must scrub gore from my body in a dingy gas station sink or crawl through the ruins of my pride, I won’t let it stop me.

I will get in, even if I have to break everything to do it. Yet the Academy’s glittering halls hide fangs beneath their polish and I’m dressed to kill.

And the arrogant, dangerously beautiful fae who abandoned me? He’s no mere attendant; he’s royalty, and now he stands above me in rank. He expects my submission, to see me dance on his strings of power. But every furious glance he throws my way sears a path straight to my core. It doesn’t help that now I’m supposed to serve him and his four equally smouldering friends. Still, I will not become a plaything.

If he thinks I’m just another pawn, he’s about to learn how fierce I can be. Because as I peel back the layers of his secrets—I discover more of my own.

What did I truly bind him with that day? And when I finally understand the twisted contract between us, will I break free from this lush, dangerous cage—or yield to the dark, exquisite temptation lurking within his arms?

Or will I destroy everything?