“I renounce this bloodline. Since you will not claim me , I claim myself.” Mona Ashveil has spent eighteen years being the wrong color, the wrong bloodline, the wrong daughter. She absorbed every erasure with the discipline of someone who learned early that visible pain gets used against you. Until her sister frames her. Until her father raises the whip. Until the last thread of hope she was still carrying finally snaps , and something ancient inside her ignites. The collar turns to cinders. The family scatters. She runs. Ashen Academy will teach her what she is. Derek Voss , cold, scarred, and infuriatingly unmoved by everything she throws at him , will teach her something she didn’t ask for. When her family comes for her, and the darkness comes for what’s left, Mona must choose: the power that would make her untouchable, or the thing she has spent her whole life believing she wasn’t worth.