Author Sahara Foley

A chilling Gothic horror novel set at a coed boarding school in Scotland, where a teen girl must not only fight against her monstrous male classmates but the monster growing within her after being cursed.

Every wish granted comes with strings attached. That’s how Catriona Cameron gets a scholarship to Floodbane Academy—an elite boarding school in the Scottish Lowlands she never applied to—where she’ll be one of only six girls to enter the castle’s unwelcoming halls.

She’s not looking for trouble, but after a violent attack, mischievous dark fairies grant cruel wishes made against her. Catriona is blessed with devastatingly good looks and unpredictable new powers, but cursed with an insatiable hunger to devour anyone who preys upon women.

As the carnage mounts, Catriona faces the possibility that she is becoming as monstrous as those she hunts. Ultimately, is vengeance worth the loss of her humanity?

**Releases September 22, 2026 – PreOrder Now!**

Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Books2Read * Bookbub * Goodreads

When class ends, two boys stalk past me, one on each side, knocking into my slender shoulders with their broader ones hard enough to send me stumbling. My belongings tumble to the floor, where they’re trod upon by my gleeful classmates. In seconds, my pencil is in shards and splinters. The pages of my book, ripped from its spine by the careless weight of countless pairs of boys’ booted feet, all muddy from the out-of-doors.

When I finally gather it all, the professor is glaring down at me. His arms are crossed, his face a formidable scowl.

“A demerit for you if a single scrap is left behind,” he warns, as if this were my doing.

I nod and claw up even the most microscopic hints of detritus from my ruined school supplies.

By the time I’ve found a bin for the rubbish and make my way outside at last, the schoolyard is empty. No groundskeeper, no angry boys , no sign of my housemates.

I stop walking halfway across the wide expanse of grass and glance over my shoulder at the school doors. What if my housemates were held up in their classes, too? Should I wait for them?

Or did they wait for me, only for me not to appear? Are they waiting for me back at our housing, getting more and more concerned by my continued absence?

Come to think of it, did they even come back to school after going home for lunch? By eating mine in my classroom, I belatedly realize they’ve no idea what became of me. Perhaps they thought I gave up and went home to my mum, as Fraser had suggested we all do. Or perhaps they’re the ones who packed up and left, and I’m the bunny rabbit twitching my nose all alone in a big clearing. Not sure which way to hop, because I detect a predator in every direction.

The school door bangs open, and I jump out of my skin.

It’s the headmaster’s assistant Fraser, looking bored and sanctimonious as always. He leans against the open door. “Ugh, what are you doing here? Did no one explain to you that the gong means ‘Go home’?”

He’s not exactly the president of the academy welcoming committee, but I’d rather run into the headmaster’s lackey than most of the other boys from my classes.

“Thanks,” I mutter. “I’m going.”

I turn my feet toward the woods.

“There isn’t a bear,” Fraser adds, apropos of nothing.

Damn it. I pause and swivel back around to glare at him. “What bear?”

“There isn’t one,” he repeats. “What did I just say?”

I know good and well that there’s no bear in these woods. Scotland doesn’t have bears. Fairies, yes, and far scarier magical beasties, but no bears. Why, then, would Fraser bring it up? Has one escaped from a traveling circus on the other side of the island? Is he hoping the rabid creature will tear me limb from limb?

“If you’re scared,” Fraser drawls with a smile, “Take the left at the fork in the trail, instead of the right. It’s not marked, or well-trod, but it’s a shortcut to the female housing.”

I narrow my eyes at him, my jaw moving in thought.

From somewhere behind him, deeper within the school, comes the grating echo of boys’ laughter. The raucous sound is hauntingly familiar.

Fraser glances behind him, down the corridor. “Ah. Here come Roderick and Angus.”

My tormentors! That settles it. I’ll take my chances with the bear.

Skirts flying, I tear off over the grass to the sound of male laughter. My lungs burn and my legs tremble, but in no time, I’m out past the great iron gates and into the dark thicket of the woods.

I jog as fast as I dare, without making too much noise or risking a sprained ankle.

Deep within the forest, I’m an arm’s length away from the protective rowan tree at the halfway point when I’m swept off the ground and hauled into the nettles, screaming.

The bear.

It got me.