Shrike

When a female scholar gets lost in a game of gods, she refuses to play along.

Twenty-seven-year-old Thorne Alder is a weapon, and she knows it.

Using her hard-earned wisdom and the power of her female presence in a male-driven field, Thorne proposes a project to the headmaster of Adonien Academy of History and Art. Her true goal isn't to develop a mythology journal or even academic glory—it's answers.

It’s magic.

The thrumming thing that wound itself around her bones the night a witch healer was brought in to assess her inexplicably violent episodes that feel like her body wants to expel her very soul. Thorne knows magic is real, and she believes she harbors a curse that means certain death to everyone she loves.

In her search for a cure, Thorne finds her destiny intricately tied to Master Dominus Shrike—a devastatingly attractive, maddeningly arrogant professor who is somehow connected to the inhuman shrieks that echo through the mist-veiled nights. Those pale green, glowing eyes of his certainly aren't human, and his nightly disappearances align too perfectly with the supernatural horrors plaguing the academy. Shrike has answers, and Thorne needs them.

Caught between unraveling her own dark history and the spine-chilling mysteries of Eregahl, Thorne must confront terrifying truths—including the voice inside her head—while trying to elude the blooming relationships around her. But with every unveiling of monsters, each clash of wits, and every dangerous touch, Thorne discovers her destiny has already been written, causing her to question every choice she’s ever made.

Now, Thorne must choose: become the vessel she was born to be or protect the first man who might survive her.