The Shattered Vow

In Vanthorn Academy, power begins with a vow.

Thea was never meant to belong there.

She is a mill girl from Oakhaven, stained with indigo, sharpened by hunger, and cursed with a stutter that makes the kingdom’s sacred language impossible to speak. When she breaks a labor tether to save her dying mother, the authorities do not execute her.

They conscript her.

Taken to Vanthorn Academy—a black-stone fortress where students bind themselves to power through spoken oaths—Thea is expected to fail, disappear, or die quietly in the dark. Instead, her fractured voice does something no one has ever seen before: it disrupts the Binding Stone itself.

Now branded an unsworn defect and trapped inside the institution that feeds on lives like her mother’s, Thea must navigate ruthless hierarchy, forbidden alliances, and the terrifying attention of those who know her voice could unravel far more than a single vow.

The Shattered Vow is a YA dark academy fantasy filled with oath-magic, silence and rebellion, deadly ritual, and a heroine whose broken words may be powerful enough to shatter an empire.