Bound by Fury

by Noelle Monét

Genres: YA Contemporary

Synopsis

Legendborn meets The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in this captivating contemporary fantasy debut about a teen whose newly awakened magical abilities send her searching for answers at elite boarding school that has a mysterious connection to her family’s history.

Harper grew up loving her grandma Gigi’s stories about pretty brown girls with magic from the stars, but they were just that—stories…until Gigi’s sudden death awakens a dangerous power building beneath Harper’s skin. Desperate for answers, Harper finds herself drawn to an elite boarding school in the Appalachian Mountains.

A school that Gigi herself attended, and one rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of witches past.

Harper arrives at Black Mountain Academy determined to learn about her burgeoning power, even if that means dealing with Kai, her grumpy ex-best friend now hellbent on getting her to leave campus, and his cousin, Lucas, who won’t let her forget the almost-kiss from last summer. But Black Mountain Academy was built on secrets, and the deeper Harper digs, the more sinister rot she finds lurking beneath.

When Harper unearths a chilling local legend about the gruesome deaths of twelve witches on campus, she feels an uncanny connection to the women. But someone doesn’t want her exposing the school’s dark past, and when it becomes clear they’ll kill to stop her, Harper has to decide whether to leave her history behind or risk everything for the truth of her own identity.

Release date: August 18, 2026

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Print pages: 496

Sample

Chapter One ONE
ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER

DAWSON’S MINI-MART IS A hole-in-the-wall convenience store crammed between a once-shuttered, four-screen movie theater and Gary’s Guns ’N’ Pawn. The sidewalks lining downtown Earnest are made of time-darkened clay bricks, and are hemmed by flowering dogwoods with blossoms like spun cotton and crape myrtles that bloom bright pink in the summertime.

By late August even the breeze carrying down from the Appalachian peaks is warmer than what’s comfortable, and though it’s overcast, the humidity still coats like a second skin. It thickens the air until you’re choking on it. Until your flesh feels like it might as well just go ahead and slough off, it’d be more comfortable to be all bones anyhow.

I long for turning leaves and the sharp scent of winter’s approach. I’ve never had the autumn winds and pumpkins along Main Street, the festival lights strung up in rainbow colors, or the snow piled in drifts along the backroads. At least, not here in Earnest, where I belong. Though now that I might finally get it, I never imagined it would happen like this.

Bells chime against the shop door as I slam through it, eyeing the sun-faded posters plastered across it like tinted window cling. I stall on the one in the middle, less worn than the rest. The photo is obscured by the Sharpie mustache some shithead kid drew, but the black block letters printed along the bottom echo the flyers outside—one duct-taped to the lamppost on the corner, another tucked beneath the wipers of the broken down beater out front.

They’re spread like whirligig seeds all over this town.

MISSING.

The word sits in my belly like lead, and the back of my hand swipes across the sweat beading my upper lip as I make a beeline for the packaged desserts aisle.

While I scan the shelves, my fingers find my phone again. I glance down at the black screen, tap it, sigh. No notifications.

I need snacks for my solo, matinee viewing of Jacob Elordi’s newest movie, but I can’t stop thinking about what my mother said before I left the house this morning.

I found this in your pocket while doing the laundry. You should wear it. It’s what she wanted.

My chest still burns with shame.

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear the necklace at first. I’d merely tucked it into my pocket and carried it with me, a weight to keep me tethered to the ground when all I wanted to do was float up, up, and away from here. From this ache.

Releasing a shaking breath, I curl my fist around the curious gold charm, the metal warm against my palm as I shove those thoughts back into their box. Instead I turn my attention to the apple fritters. Should I get those or the rainbow brownies? A package of frosted mini donuts is crinkling beneath my touch when the old woman previously stationed behind the counter rounds the corner. Our eyes meet briefly, and we both do that strained, close-lipped grin of greeting.

Every time I turn into a new aisle, I tense, wondering if this will be the moment that I come face-to-face with one of the boys. I can see it—our three sets of sticky fingers rummaging through the ice-pop freezer, back when Mr. Mahoney was still the owner, and we could slip through the legs of vacationers like water, coins clattering onto the counter as we ran back out into the blistering sun.

The memories are a knife in my gut, and the pain only worsens when I recall what I saw last night.

The glow from the window across the way.

Malachi’s silhouette dancing against the gauzy curtains.

A year of silence stretches between us. Unanswered questions. The rage of knowing how disastrously things ended last summer. I can’t tell if I’m desperate to see him again because I miss him so much, I can’t breathe—or because I’m desperate to wring his neck.

Still, the heaviness of guilt unfurls in my chest.

It’s all my fault.

I touch my pocket, just in case my phone is vibrating and I haven’t noticed.

It’s not.

The cashier is busying herself with straightening the shelves, her pale hands idling on boxes of Ho Hos as her eyes cut to me once again.

Weaving my way into the next aisle, I stiffen as she trails after me. I will the heat that burns in my lungs to go away. But it creeps, languishing in red as it blooms outward, spreading beneath my skin, darkening the tips of my ears, the back of my neck.

I swipe a two-pack of Zebra Cakes off the shelf and turn another corner, rolling my shoulders against the building tension.

I haven’t had a single fucking second to breathe in the last month. Not since I woke up on my sixteenth birthday and padded into my grandmother’s room, a strange, tingle-like anticipation buzzing across my skin.

Instead of a sea of balloons to trip over and a wall of birthday streamers, what I found was a barren hallway and a closed bedroom door, wide open eyes and a mouth agape, and a pulse so thready I could have sworn it wasn’t there. Instead of sprinkle cake and sparkler candles, what I got was a throat ripped raw from screaming and bruised knees and the feel of her ribs cracking beneath my hands.

No one tells you how bad giving CPR sucks.

No one tells you that you have to hurt people to save them.

And I did save her. But at what cost, and for how long?

I grip the handle of the glass refrigerator and grab a soda, swallowing the lump in my throat. The cashier’s shuffling steps hit my eardrums like claps of thunder, and I try—and fail—to bury my growing agitation as I wander into the next aisle.

Again, I grab my phone. Nothing. I rotate it in my hands. Short side, long side, short side, long side.

Behind me a fluorescent light flickers.

My mother told me she’d call the second anything changes. The nurses practically pushed me out the door. Said something about self-care. That she’s safe with them.

Platitudes meant to placate me.

I blow a raspberry as my gaze shifts to the rounded mirror at the end of the row, and I watch as seconds later, the cashier rolls back into view. Holding my breath, I will away the words barred by the gate of my clenched teeth. I press my palms against my thighs to staunch the tremor pulsing through my hands.

The keys on the woman’s belt rattle as she continues to track me through the store, each scraping of the metal like a scalding nail down my spine.

Truthfully, this feeling has been building in me for days. My composure a fraying thread that’s always one inconvenience away from snapping.

Despite the fact that Gigi hasn’t said a word since her stroke, she spent all yesterday jackknifing up from her bed, her bony, now-emaciated hands ripping at the gown, pulling it from her neck like she was trying to escape from something. I spent the day covering and re-covering her chest and whispering into her hair, “It’s okay. You can go now. You can go now.”

When the meds finally lulled her into a fitful sleep, I watched the glittering stars from her hospice room window and willed the stories of my childhood to be true. Begged them to be true.

Stories of pretty brown girls with magic in their blood. Stories of generations of women born of the stars. They were bedtime stories and make-believe, but they never failed to bring a smile to my grandmother’s lips.

I’d forgotten them, too caught up in everything hard and real about life. But last night I pulled out every memory I could find and laid them bare in front of me. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard, I got a tension headache, and I prayed for a miracle.

I prayed for power, for magic, for secrets—anything to save her.

But there was nothing. Nothing inside me but despair.

Behind me the woman clears her throat, and it’s like a surge of searing light cuts through my mind.

The tinge of blood floods my mouth, and I sniffle, glancing over my shoulder. The woman is still there, watching me.

I spin on my heel.

“Can I help you?”

Graying eyebrows shoot to her forehead as she holds up her hands. “I’m just doing my job.”

Somewhere in the back of the store a beeping begins.

I shake my head. My skin burns. The air around me undulates like heat waves off a summer road. “No, you’re following me around the store. Why?”

The woman sputters, but her eyes are hard. “I know your type. It ain’t illegal for me to protect what’s mine. You come in here checking your phone like you waiting on somethin’. Y’all think that ’cause we just simple white folk, we don’t know your ways? The law applies to you just like it do e’rybody else.”

As if I give a shit about this crotchety old lady or her dusty-ass store. It doesn’t matter how many times something like this happens—just because I saw it coming doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

“Are you kidding me?” My hands ball at my sides, and her eyes flicker to them warily. “I’m not stealing anything, lady. I’m just trying to buy a snack.”

The sardonic grin that splits her face makes my stomach knot.

“I ain’t no goddamn idiot! You may not be stealing, but that’s only ’cause I’m here keeping my eye on you. That’s the only way your kind will ever stay in line. Might as well go back to wherever the hell you come from if you don’t like it!”

Confusion and ire war within me. This woman doesn’t even know who she’s discriminating against—all she sees is the brown of my skin and the width of my nose and the curl of my hair. It doesn’t matter to her what I am, just that I am not like her.

The high-pitched beeping at the back of the store crescendos as fury, bitter on my tongue, overtakes me. My Gigi is dying, and this woman wants to accuse me of trying to steal from her?! My whole body shakes as I regard her sneer, the way her hand hovers at her phone, finger poised above the nine. Gigi would say that I should rise above, but that’s where we differ. I don’t want to rise above racists. I want to meet them in the depths of hell and watch as the fire melts the flesh from their bones.

Static scorches the tips of my fingers, something raw and uncomfortable cracking open at my core, flooding my veins. My vision blurs, and the layering of a thousand murmuring voices in countless languages buzzes in my head, disorienting me.

The woman looks at me expectantly, 911 dialed on her phone.

I open my mouth to spit my response, but my words are stolen by the sprinklers in the ceiling as they activate.

The first droplet of water hits my face, and instantly the feeling evaporates—whatever the fuck that was. Gripping the store shelves, I turn my face to the sky and let the artificial rain douse the flames of my anger.

“What the hell?” the woman screeches, abandoning our argument before tucking her phone into her pocket and bridging her fingers over her head as she scampers toward the back of the store. My heartbeat slows to a dull thud as I abandon my Zebra Cakes for a bag of chips and a Kit-Kat and walk past the register, tossing a ten-dollar bill on the counter and flipping off the camera that stares from the corner.

I feel empty now that the pressure in my chest has dissipated and I’ve returned to my baseline existential panic.

But in the hollow of its absence, something stirs.

No longer in the mood for a movie, I burst through the door and round the corner with only one regret as my phone begins to ring in my pocket.

I should’ve just stolen the shit.