The Duelist's Confession

Synopsis

At Saint-Vermeil Academy, every cadet wears a Steel Oath tattoo: lie or touch unlawfully, and the mark blackens into rot where everyone can see. Esme Calvier, a precise but overlooked second-year duelist, survives by night as V. Marrante, the anonymous ghostwriter behind the empire's most elegant dueling memoirs. When she draws Lucien Aubray in the semi-final bracket—the brilliant heir whose private memoir she wrote last winter—he begins visiting the records-balcony after midnight, quoting lines he should never know and forcing her to answer under the Oath. Esme cannot withdraw, cannot lie, and cannot let anyone audit the Marrante manuscripts locked inside the headmaster's office. Lucien's blackmail is not meant to make her lose. It is meant to make her win in public, so the empire will have to ask who she really is.

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