Keeper Held

Elara Voss has spent nineteen years learning that everything has a price.At Corvanth, even survival is entered in a ledger.She arrives at the Shadow Court Academy with no family name worth knowing, no patron, and no intention of owing anyone anything. But when an ancient rite binds her to Kael Vahren—the cold, controlled heir of the first Court—Elara loses the one thing she has always considered entirely hers: the right to keep herself to herself.The bond keeps them within reach of one another. It carries pain, cold, fear—and things neither of them has agreed to share.Then Elara discovers something beneath Corvanth that the Academy has spent centuries recording without explaining. Old doors remember hands. Missing histories leave marks. And the deeper Elara looks into the institution that assigned her, the clearer one thing becomes:Corvanth is not preparing its students for what waits beneath the mountain.It is keeping accounts.And somewhere, someone is keeping hers.