Seren Voss doesn't arrive at Veramont Academy. She returns.
She knows the weight of the oak doors. The smell of the east corridor. The names of the four Kings who run this place like it belongs to them.
It did, once. Built on a lie her family has been carrying for a hundred and thirty years.
Seren isn't here to belong. She's here to correct the record. And she has been building toward this with the patience and precision of someone who has nothing left to lose except the plan.
But the Kings are not what she prepared for. Not entirely. One sees through her before she's ready to be seen. One is hiding something in a box that doesn't close properly. One believes in this institution with a wholeness that costs her something she doesn't name.
And one shares her family name.
Claimed by the Academy Kings is not a love story. It is the story of a woman who chose truth over everything, and what everything turned out to include.
Sharp, slow-burning, and unlike anything you've read in this genre.
The record will be corrected. The only question is what she loses in the correcting.