turned in the dark. He was there again. The boy from her dreams. Tall. Barefoot. Wrapped in shadows and moonlight. His eyes - silver with a ring of violet - were too familiar, like she'd stared into

wer from me," she realized. "We draw power from what we desire," he said. "And you, darling, are made of desire no one understands." The feather in her hand pulsed with magic - glowing violet before disappearing. "That's the first part of your gift," he whispered. "You'll get more." "Why me?" His face darkened. "Because you were cursed. And part of the curse... was me." Later, after he vanished into shadows, Seren looked at her arm. The glowing mark had changed again - curling upward now like wings. Each time she encountered one of them - the Vampire, the Dragon, now the Incubus - something awakened in her. She wasn't just marked. She was being rewritten. And something inside her whispered: "One more to find. Then the circle begins again." After Talon vanished, Seren couldn't sleep. Instead, she crept into the private bathroom she shared with her dorm wing. The mirror fogged without steam. Her reflection didn't quite move in time with her. She wiped it clean-and gasped. For a single second, her reflection had horns curling from her hairline. Black, twisted. Beautiful. And then it was gone. "This school is going to drive me insane," she whispered. From behind her, a voice purred: "Insanity is just another way of seeing things others can't." She spun. No one there. But a purple lily bloomed on the counter. Still warm. She tried to lose herself in books the next day. Ashmoor's library was enormous - dusty, enchanted, and half-haunted. She wandered into the forbidden wing, pulled by instinct more than choice. Talon's feather still sat inside her jacket pocket, warm against her skin. She found a book with no title. It opened itself. "The Bound Soul. The Lover Who Returned." Illustrations spilled across the pages: a girl with a glowing mark. Four shadowed figures. Fire. Death. Rebirth. One of the pages showed a woman who looked eerily like Seren... bleeding silver from her heart, while an Incubus wept at