House of Marionne

Seventeen-year-old Quell has spent her life running. Born with toushana, a forbidden dark magic, she and her mother move from place to place to stay ahead of the deadly forces that hunt people like her.

When her secret finally surfaces, Quell is forced to take refuge inside a hidden society of magical elites, where survival means becoming the perfect debutante among families obsessed with status, wealth, and power.

Lessons in poise come tangled up with something far more dangerous in her sessions with Jordan, her brooding mentor and an assassin in training, and the longer Quell stays, the more she belongs to a world she was raised to fear.

But the Order that shelters her guards its privilege ruthlessly, and as Quell uncovers how far it will go to protect itself, she’s pushed toward an impossible choice: embrace the very magic she’s spent her life suppressing, or risk losing everyone she has come to love.

Glittering and dark in equal measure, the novel blends ballgowns and betrayal, dark academia, and slow-burning romance into the opening of a trilogy about a girl learning to stop hiding what she is.