Zoe Kincaid has spent three years stealing magic from the elite, flooding forbidden knowledge onto pirate channels so anyone-not just bloodline heirs-could learn to cast. Now the most prestigious magical university in the country isn't expelling her. They're recruiting her. And assigning her to the one professor dangerous enough to match her move for move.
Rhys Donnelly is a war-mage bound by a Vow of Severance that makes him both the most powerful and most tightly leashed teacher at Coastal Elite University. He's supposed to neutralize Zoe. Instead, he becomes the only person inside the institution asking the same questions she is. Their chemistry is immediate, volatile, and the only place either of them stops performing.
But the Consortium didn't bring Zoe inside to help her. They're trying to contain her-and what she carries in her blood, a power signature that should not exist outside the founding families. As her underground network begins to disappear and her enemies move to publicly destroy her, Zoe and Rhys discover the truth: the magical elite have spent a century rewriting the world's working sigils, locking out everyone who doesn't carry the right bloodline.
The system that tried to cage her is about to wake its deepest weapon. Zoe must choose between burning it all down or standing inside the fire to fight. Either way, nothing will be the same.