Everyone's power wakes at fifteen. Everyone, in every race. No one is ever left with nothing. No one except her. Kaira Vane is sixteen, and she has never felt a spark of power in her life. The world has a place for people like her — a gray city called Duskmire, where the powerless go to be forgotten. She should have accepted that. She should have stayed small and quiet and safe. She didn't. Now she stands at the gates of Nexus Academy — the school of dragon princes, elf heirs, and witch prodigies — with no power, a father nobody has ever heard of, and a question no one will answer: why did they let her in? The strongest student in the school, a dragonkin royal with fire in his blood, watches her like he's waiting for something. An old graduate freezes when he sees her. And somewhere far away, behind stone walls and older lies, a woman she has never met presses her hand to a cold cell and whispers the same prayer every night. Half-casts die before their ninth birthday. Everyone knows that too. So the real question is not where Kaira came from. The real question is — why is she still alive?