Lira Nightfell climbs 700 steps to an academy where they measure your magic and erase anyone who cannot be sorted, and she carries a shadow that could get her burned. The Aerolith reads her as a light-bias Warder because she has spent her life learning to lie, but Professor Theron Blackwood sees the truth and does not turn her in, because he is the same thing she is, and he has been hiding it for 14 years. Their secret lessons become a bond, the bond becomes a target, and when an Inquisitor arrives to hunt Shadowborn, Lira has to decide whether she will keep hiding or step into the ring and show the whole academy what she is. The school that was built to forge weapons has found a weapon it cannot aim, and the only person who understands her is the only man in the faculty who has been pretending not to be exactly what she is. She learns to read the wants of everyone around her, and what she reads in him changes everything she thought she knew about hiding.
This is a magical romance about the fear of being seen and the freedom of being known, set in a school where the greatest threat is not the monsters in the crypts but the people who make rules about what you are allowed to become. It is about learning to read the wants of everyone around you, and learning to want something of your own, and about a door that stays open for the ones who come after you.
Inside, you'll discover:
• The 700 steps and the gate that tastes what you are
• The membrane that reads the wants of everyone around her
• The suppression he chose and the shadow he buried
• The cellar lessons and the bond they build in the dark
• The tournament, the flicker, and the ring that nearly breaks her
• The Inquisitor, the hearing, and the choice she makes in the open
• The door that stays open for the ones who come after