Painted TaintedUpdated at Dec 12, 2025, 04:43
Calista has always lived in colors.With an artistic mind and a quiet talent for sketching whatever stirs her soul, she believed her future would be simple, filled with canvases, landscapes, and dreams.Until the night everything she loved burned.Her best friend Viviana’s secret feelings for Xavier, her boyfriend turn into a betrayal she never saw coming. And before she can understand the heartbreak, the mate ceremony begins, a ritual that decides every 18-year-old’s fate.Viviana and Xavier are paired.Calista is not.In a kingdom where the “Moonless” are banished, she is forced into the Rogue Lands… only to be taken by royal advisors and delivered to the palace as a blindfolded servant. A place where sight is forbidden, questions are dangerous, and removing the cloth means death.But Calista’s mind is sharper than her eyes. And the palace is full of secrets begging to be uncovered.Why must the servants live in darkness?What truly happened on the night of the ceremony?And why does he, the cold, feared heir of the kingdom always seem drawn to the quiet girl who sees more without her eyes than others do with vision?With her art stripped away and her freedom stolen, Calista must navigate lies, rituals, and hidden truths her kingdom wants buried. Because the truth behind the mate system is darker than the blindfolds they force upon her… And Calista may be the only one capable of exposing it.Even if doing so could cost her everything.