Gideon the Ninth

She has spent her entire life trying to escape the girl who owns her — and now that same girl is the only reason she's still alive.

Gideon Nav wants exactly three things: out of the crumbling Ninth House, away from Harrowhark Nonagesimus, and a sword fight worth having. What she gets instead is a forced alliance with the necromancer she despises most, buried inside a labyrinthine mansion filled with ancient puzzles, rival houses, and something ancient and hungry lurking in the dark.

Harrowhark is brilliant, ruthless, and has treated Gideon as a weapon her whole life. But weapons, it turns out, have thoughts. Feelings. Opinions delivered at maximum sarcasm. And as the body count rises and the mysteries deepen, the hatred between them curdles into something neither of them has a name for — something that terrifies Harrowhark far more than any monster in the halls.

Their chemistry is a collision: sharp edges meeting sharper wit, years of resentment cracking open to reveal something raw and devastating underneath. Every stolen glance, every snarled argument, every moment one saves the other costs them both something they can't get back.

Gideon thought freedom was the only thing she'd ever want.

She had no idea what she was really fighting for — until she was already willing to die for it.