Shadows of the Marked: a Dark Academia Enemies to Lovers Forbidden Professor Romance Crimson Academy Book

She’s the powerless scholarship student who doesn’t belong.He’s the dangerous professor who should never want her.And their forbidden lessons are about to ignite something neither of them can control.Verity Blackwell failed her magical awakening at fourteen and has spent five years being called mundane. Powerless. Nothing. When a rare late-bloomer scholarship gets her into the prestigious Crimson Academy, she’s determined to prove everyone wrong—even if it means working twice as hard as students who’ve had magic their whole lives.Professor Cassian Deveraux is brilliant, brooding, and absolutely off-limits. He’s also the only person at the Academy who sees potential in Verity instead of failure. When he offers private tutoring sessions to help unlock her shadow magic, she knows it’s dangerous. But she’s desperate to survive.What starts as innocent lessons becomes something far more complicated. His touch ignites her magic. His voice makes her shadows dance. And the way he looks at her—like she’s powerful, extraordinary, worth everything—makes her forget why this is wrong.But they’re not alone in watching her transformation.Zayden Ashford—cruel, gorgeous, the boy who’s made her life hell—has secrets of his own. Secrets about why he torments her. Why he can’t seem to stay away. And why watching her grow close to Professor Deveraux is breaking something inside him.Verity came to Crimson Academy to learn magic.She never expected to become the center of a forbidden romance that could destroy them all.Can a powerless girl become powerful enough to choose her own destiny? Or will the Academy’s dark secrets consume her before she gets the chance?