Unbound: Confluence Academy, Book 1

When nineteen-year-old Nessa Thorne volunteers for the Empire's selection, she expects to die. What she doesn't expect is Confluence Academy—a brutal military institution where students bond elemental beasts, harness raw magic, and sharpen themselves into the Empire's most lethal weapons. Survival here isn't guaranteed. It's earned in blood.

Every student wears their destiny in ink: the blue of water, the gold of fire, the green of earth, the white of air. But the mark that brands Nessa's skin is something else entirely—a silver spiral, the ancient symbol of the unbound. A power so catastrophic the Empire claimed to have hunted her kind to extinction centuries ago.

They lied.

Now Nessa must master magic she doesn't understand, tether a beast she can barely control, and keep her mark hidden in a castle where students murder each other for competitive advantage—and failing to bond an elemental is a death sentence in itself. The last thing she needs is Raith Hollow, the academy's most formidable fire affinity, watching her with those burning eyes like he already knows her secret.

He's arrogant, dangerous, and infuriating. He's also the only other volunteer, which means their fates are uncomfortably, inescapably tangled.

In a world built on power and deception, the girl who was never supposed to exist and the boy who burns everything he touches may be each other's