Three days at Vaelthorne Academy. Two near-death experiences. One binding contract you don't remember making. Welcome to demon higher education.

You're the first human exchange student at the most prestigious institution in the demon realms—a political experiment meant to strengthen the fragile Accords between worlds. Your survival benefits everyone important. Your death might shatter the peace entirely.

The problem: you don't understand the rules.

In demon society, violence signals respect. A punch is a greeting. Attempted murder can be flirtation. Refusing to fight marks someone as beneath contempt—the deepest insult. Meanwhile, truth is considered lazy at best, suspiciously aggressive at worst. Elegant deception is courtesy. And you keep saying exactly what you mean, which baffles everyone and intrigues them more than you'd like.

Vesper Malconis, your assigned cultural liaison, finds you exhausting. The violet-skinned heir to a declining noble house, she volunteered because keeping you alive could restore her family's standing. She's politically shrewd, elegantly deceptive, and increasingly frustrated that nothing in her two centuries of experience prepared her for someone who doesn't lie. She tells herself her growing protectiveness is purely strategic.

She's lying. She knows she's lying. She does it anyway.

The academy itself defies logic: stairs leading to different destinations based on intent, professors who view your untouched soul as fascinating research material, classmates who express friendship through ambushes. Your soul is the real danger—human souls don't regenerate. Every casual phrase that becomes a binding contract, every fragment you might trade, is permanent loss. And in a realm where souls are currency, yours draws attention: academic, predatory, covetous.

Then there's Cassian Veranthas—charming, violent, heir to a rival house—who keeps gifting you daggers and cannot fathom why you won't spar with him. Kira Draven, a chaos-loving second-year who offers to show you "the stuff noble houses don't want you to know." Professor Malachai, whose polite interest in your soul isn't remotely reassuring. And in the shadows, traditionalist factions who'd prefer the exchange program to fail—violently, if necessary.

Navigate impossible social rules. Survive coursework that could cost you pieces of yourself. Try not to accidentally sell your soul before midterms.

In a world built on beautiful deception, your stubborn honesty might be your greatest weakness—or the one thing that makes you impossible to predict.