Amoura Awakened - The Veiled Flame, #1

Some histories refuse to stay buried. Some magic refuses to stay hidden. And some girls refuse to stay small.

Amoura Renly didn't ask to set her classroom on fire. She definitely didn't ask to be a witch.

But for some, magic doesn't ask – it just arrives. Now Amoura is branded dangerous and given one way out: a place at Elderwood School for the Magically Inclined, hidden beneath the streets of San Francisco.

It should feel like a lifeline. It doesn't.

In the halls of Elderwood, surrounded by other witches, Amoura remains the outsider. While her peers easily command Fire, Water, Earth, and Air to cast their spells, she struggles. Worse still, she finds herself caught in a web of elitist rivalries, and trained by a duplicitous mentor.

Unlike every other witch at Elderwood, Amoura's magic doesn't come from the Elements. It lives inside her – woven into her blood, her breath, her every cell. In a world policed by the Purity Champions, who hunt witches like her, that's not a gift. It's a death sentence.

The discovery of a dead woman's journal pulls her into a century of erased history. Slowly Amoura begins to understand why the most powerful witch alive has spent decades making sure girls like her never exist.

She can keep pretending. Keep hiding. Keep herself small enough to survive.

Or she can find out what she actually is – and what she'll burn to protect everyone she loves.

Written for fans of urban yet epic fantasy, Amoura Awakened is an exploration of identity and the increasingly prevalent dynamics of us vs them, in-crowd vs out-crowd. It's a story for those who believe that the most dangerous thing in the world – any world – is someone who realizes the power they wield within.

 Tried to make the dualism vs non-dualism concept a little more accessible for potential young adult readers