PROLOGUE

If you'd told me a month ago I'd be hunting by spell-code, accidentally bonded to a brooding magical agent, and working in a city where even the lampposts have opinions, I'd have laughed or cried, probably both.

But the Velmora for you.

A city build on magic, fueled by secrets and impossible to find unless it wants to be found. And somehow, it wanted me.

My name is Ivy, I'm 20, sarcastic, slightly too curious, and definitely not prepared for all this. Back in the normal world, I was just a girl with a mildly magical heritage and a very unmagical resume. So when I got a cryptic invitation to Intern at the Velmora Research Bureau, I thought it was a joke, or a scam, or maybe some sort of spell-mishap addressing to the wrong Ivy.

Spoiler: It was very real.

Velmora isn't like any place I've ever seen. A modern city with magical skyscrapers, floating cafés, underground spell markets, and a public transit system that may or may not be sentient. The street shimmer if they like you, and the city itself? It watches. It remembers.

And the peoples? Oh, don't get me started.

There's Lani, my terrifying smart roommate who talks faster than a racing broomstick and probably sleeps on every full moon. Jori, who's a flirt, a researcher, and occasionally part shadow-creature. Madam Vee, the tea-reading prophet who might be 500 years old and definitely knows too much.

And then there's him.

Ronan Vale.

Tall, serious, and as emotionally available as a brick wall. He is a senior agent at the Bureau, my unwilling mentor, and possibly the only person in Velmora who can walk through a magical explosion and come out looking annoyed instead of injured.

We don't exactly get along. I talked too much. He broods to hard. I ask questions. He avoids answers. But somehow we keep getting tangled together - by spell work, by accident, by fate. Or maybe Velmora just finds it funny.

It was a warning.

A test.

Or maybe... A trap.

Either way, I'm in it now. Deep and if I want to survive, I'll have to figure out how to outwit a city built to outsmart everyone inside it.

WELCOME TO VELMORA.

It's beautiful. It's terrifying.

And it might just break my heart.

But not for the reasons I thought .

Not because of the monsters in the tunnels or the spellstorms brewing at the edge of the city. Not even because I’m in over my head (which, let’s be real—I totally am). No. It’s him. Ronan. The man who’s supposed to be guiding me through all this chaos, and who somehow, without trying, keeps dragging my heart along with him.

He’s closed-off and complicated. I’m chaos with a smile. We don’t fit.

But Velmora doesn’t care about logic.

And neither, it seems, does fate.

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