Vye Vorelia is stabbed and burned by rivals at the brutal Castra Mortis war college, but her long-hidden Phoenix bloodline drags her back out of the mass pyre.

The only witness is Inkubix, reclusive heir to a compulsion bloodline he has spent years vowing never to use, who breaks that vow to falsify her death record and hide her from the proctors who would vivisect a living anomaly.

Now legally dead and consumed by the need to never be powerless again, Vye navigates deadly training gauntlets, a charged affair with her dangerous combat professor, and her deepening entanglement with the obsessive scholar who claims her survival is now his to protect.

Their bond is forged around negotiated power, control, and consent as an outside threat closes in on the academy.

Tropes: dark academia, death and resurrection, enemies to lovers, obsessive/possessive hero, protective stalker hero, morally grey hero, secret bloodline / hidden identity, love triangle, the wrong man vs. the endgame, monster who loves the heroine, consensual power exchange, forced proximity, hidden name reveal, found family among cadets