Praise for Sight Unseen

  “Sight Unseen is a contemporary fantasy, but as the best fantasies are, it is also deeply real. The world is exceptionally textured, familiar yet new, and conveyed to us in prose that is transportive, patient, beguiling. At its core, Sight Unseen is a story about healing in three modes—a curse, a family, a child—all entwined with a delicate, beautifully wrought slow-burn romance. A darkly gleaming gem of a novel.”

  —Brigitte Knightley, New York Times bestselling author of The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy

  “Alexis Marie writes with such emotional depth that you cannot help but become addicted. I devoured every syllable.”

  —Julie Soto, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rose in Chains

  “Sight Unseen is a bold, utterly addicting debut, blending suspense, magic, and romance with staggering ease. Marie’s storytelling is unmatched, and I can’t wait to see what addiction she conjures next.”

  —Karla Sorensen, bestselling author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2026 by Alexis Marie

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

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  ISBN-13: 9781662536793 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781662536786 (digital)

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder

  Cover image: © Anne Costello / ArcAngel Images; © Jackyenjoyphotography, © The Nature Notes, © ivan-96 / Getty; © melazerg, © Lesik Vitaliy / Shutterstock

  Nothing. Something. Everything.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  On nights when nature defies its own rules, magic is most potent. The perfect time to find what she needs.

  Armed with a worn leather foraging bag and a sharpening knife, Veda walks the old forest’s twisted paths, ready for whatever lies in wait. Ducking under low-hanging branches, she dodges bushes and trees, stepping over fallen boughs with the ease of years spent foraging. Veda doesn’t stop until echoes of her destination graze her awareness. After one final cut through thick foliage, the sound of the river’s current spills through. Veda emerges, exposed to the sky. The blue moon remains veiled behind clouds, casting an ethereal glow.

  Beneath riverbank rocks, luminescent moss flourishes. Using her knife, Veda digs out only what she needs and places it into a small black pouch. Foraging is a twofold pursuit: It keeps the school’s supply closet full of otherwise expensive ingredients and satisfies Veda’s joy for the hunt.

  She retrieves a lantern from her bag and whispers, “Lux.”

  The Cosmos demand payment for every spell cast, and Mages’ currency is physical pain and suffering—a price many pay willingly. But Veda is lucky. The eye-shaped sapphire amulet around her neck glows, absorbing the cost as the lantern floats ahead, illuminating the path.

  What has been lurking in the darkness turns her bones to ice.

  Bloodred spider lilies aren’t native to Washington state, nor are they in season, yet they are in full bloom as far as she can see. Relief floods her veins when the flowers don’t catch fire, but it does little to ease her fear. She tries to outwalk the prickly unease, heading downstream across slippery rocks, but anxiety clings to her like a vise.

  A sudden storm of stirring winds and rumbling thunder charges the air like static fire. Veda searches for a path, a way home; the ticking seconds echo the rhythm of her heart. The sky opens, and rain turns dirt to mud, unearthing the sediments of her past. Taking root, fear blooms into petals of panic, driving Veda to run. Thin branches sting her face, but she doesn’t stop until the downpour suddenly eases. Moonlight finds her between the thinning raindrops, pushing away the darkness and revealing not only the path home but the flowers that followed her. Bloodred, and too close for comfort.

  Trouble.

  One

  Veda rips from the root as many spider lilies as she can carry and throws them into her makeshift firepit. Drenched from rain and dirty from weeding, she watches the crackling flames turn to ash. Sunbeams filter through the forest, painting the trees with a smoky golden glow. The hushed moment lulls her fears into dormancy until they reignite with the realization that fire purifies; it doesn’t always destroy.

  She extinguishes the last of the embers in favor of a trip back to her cabin for a hot shower, from which Veda emerges in a cloud of steam a short time later. She grabs a towel, noticing the welts on her brown skin from the trek through the forest. After gathering her thick copper-brown hair into a bun, she carefully spreads her arms in front of the mirror.

  The Sanguis Curse slumbers in her blood. Fatal if not for the bewitching magic that keeps it sidelined, the curse feeds on her energy, growing stronger. For the past six years, purple bruises have deepened into angry clusters of raised skin. Black veins have branched like fractals, curving around her shoulder, inching toward her throat. Every avenue for a cure has ended in failure, meaning that, one day, the Sanguis Curse will consume her. But her curser’s blood fills a cyst on her ribs, a reminder of a mistake that damns the culprit to die with Veda . . . if they don’t kill her first.

  Wincing, Veda rubs salve on what she can reach. Magic activates at first touch, cooling her skin and easing the pain. It’s a temporary fix that helps her get through each day. She hides her mortality beneath jeans and long sleeves to avoid the looks and questions, then swallows a pain elixir, another for nutrients, and makes oatmeal to combat the impending nausea.

  She’s halfway finished eating when the blue gemstone sitting in a glass jar on the table pulses twice before glowing bright. Rendered obsolete by modern technology, lapis stone messages were once the only method of instant communication when secrecy was paramount. Ominous uncertainty knots her stomach. Veda picks it up. A shock of magic races up her arm as a familiar voice projects from the stone:

  “Come quickly.”

  It goes inert.

  “Shit.”

  Veda grabs a jacket and sets off.

  Dense, tall trees create a canopy overhead, casting shadows across Veda’s path.

  A breeze rustles the trees as chirping birds dart to and fro. Lined with ivy and fern, the uneven trail is a worn path of her own creation. The scent of rich, damp earth is calming, the atmospheric fog and steady drizzle, peaceful. Without a spider lily sighting, the walk is a perfect distraction.

  Veda emerges into the pasture behind Weston Academy. She’s not fifty yards from the tree line when the first chicken scuttles past her feet. More follow, scattering across the field, pecking at the ground in noisy pursuit of critters. Their liberator, Peter Weston, waits by the gate, his fair skin flushed from time spent under the morning sun.

  Peter is an intentional man. That he’s straying from routine puts Veda on edge—a tension he tries to ease with a crooked smile. With green eyes, tousled blond hair, and soft yet strong features, the tall, slim Seer is handsome in all the ways that count, and none that soothe her nerves.

  “Who died?” Veda asks cautiously.

  “No one.” His smile falters. “Oh shit. I only used the stone message because I thought you were already in the greenhouse without your phone. Sorry I scared you.”

  “It’s fine.” Veda wants to relax, but the anchored unease in her bones won’t allow it.

  Gaze sharpening, he gently tilts her chin to the side. “What happened to your face?”

  “I didn’t want to waste the blue moon, so I went foraging.” She winces. “There were hundreds of spider lilies along the path about half a mile north of the cottage. I got spooked, it started raining, and I ran into a tree branch or five.”

  “Tomorrow is the last day of March, but spider lilies bloom in late summer,” Peter muses thoughtfully. “It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

  “I know. I figured I’d talk to Gabriel after he drops off August.”

  “You do that, and I’ll ask a forestry technician I know to guide them out there.”


>   “Okay.” Veda takes off her heavy satchel and slings it over his shoulder. The weight doesn’t faze him. “My bag’s still wet. I wanted to collect more, but what I did gather is safe and sound, ready to make anything the school needs.”

  Peter nudges her. “They could use a lesson from the best brewer I know.”

  “Ms. Everly is a good brewing master,” Veda says, dismissing him with a wave as they walk toward the school. Weston Academy is a single-story brick-and-stone building with high ceilings and dozens of windows. It sits on a small butte, with steps shaped from the hillside and a large wraparound deck where students linger. Peter pauses at the top of the steps and squeezes Veda’s shoulder. The chill of his spell tingles her skin before she can stop him. Soreness vanishes like it was never there.

  While the price for magic isn’t always equal or fair for Mages or those without amulets to absorb the cost of their spells, Seers like Peter are a minority who can use magic without physical consequences. How remains a mystery, though theories point to a specific gene cluster activated when Sight—the precognitive ability to glimpse the past, present, or future—manifests. Seers cannot brew potions or imbue magic into anything except amulets, and they’re highly sensitive to magical neutralizing agents, but they don’t suffer chills from casting light spells, broken bones from hexes, or organ failure from curses. Sight isn’t a choice. It comes with a lifetime of discrimination, stereotyping, and unchecked harassment by some of the Mage majority that sees them as dangerous abominations.

  “You could get in trouble for that,” Veda mutters. “Then Khadijah is going to be mad as hell when enforcers kick down your door to arrest you for a casting violation . . . again.”

  Peter smiles at the mention of his wife. “They’d probably take her in, too, for mouthing off.”

  Veda shakes her head, amused. “True.”

  “Besides, that healing spell was weak enough for a Mage to cast without major injury, which makes it legal. As long as Seers don’t display overt magical superiority, we’re safe.”

  “I know. It doesn’t stop me from worrying.”

  Calling Peter a friend doesn’t quite match the true nature of the bond they forged years ago, when he sat beside her at orientation during freshman year at Crestwood University. It was the first year the campus integrated Mages and Seers, and tensions were high. He spoke first, cautious but polite, and their conversation turned genuine the moment Veda argued that integration should have happened years earlier. Born in that moment, their friendship grew during intellectual debates and bittersweet nostalgic ramblings about her childhood, and rooted deep enough to endure after Peter returned to Proventia to take over Weston Academy from his retiring mother, while Veda moved to Philadelphia for medical school. He is the closest thing to a sibling she’s had.

  “Are you okay?” Peter asks.

  Veda doesn’t trust easily, a conditioned reflex after losing so much. Even though she’s never doubted Peter, the answer is complicated. Best to keep her feelings buried and stick to the script.

  “I’m fine.”

  Peter’s timing either protects or prepares Veda—the hardest part is recognizing the difference. Outside his office, with a hand hovering over the knob, he becomes unusually cryptic. “This isn’t an emergency in the traditional sense.”

  Before she can ask what the hell that means, Peter pushes open the door and gestures for her to enter. More suspicious than wary, she stays close to the wall. Peter’s office is small and well lit, with neutral walls, oak floors, sparse furniture, and an antique ceramic tea set that serves as an icebreaker for parent meetings.

  Standing in front of his wall of bookshelves is an older, petite woman who emanates an air so superior, Veda regrets not rinsing the mud off her boots before entering the room. The woman wears long deep-purple pants and a matching knee-length embroidered kameez with gold earrings and jewelry, and her makeup is as perfect as her silky black hair—streaked with gray at the temples and pulled back with a vintage gold hair clip adorned with a colorful array of tiny amulets. Freckles dot her brown skin, and crow’s-feet indent the corners of round brown eyes. Both speak to her age and only heighten the powerful presence she exudes.

  The woman’s pensive focus is fixed on a target. Veda follows her gaze to a child no older than six occupying the chair in front of Peter’s desk. Despite dangling feet, the boy reminds Veda of a micro-adult. With deep-tan skin, freckles, bright-hazel eyes, and dark-brown hair gelled and parted severely to one side, he carries a cautious, curious tension while maintaining a level of stillness children his age rarely possess. He’s dressed in the standard school uniform—a white button-down, fitted black pants, and leather dress shoes—and his black knitted bow tie stands out as much as the standard blazer neatly draped over the back of his seat in an oddly tidy act.

  “Apologies for keeping you both waiting. Veda, this is my godson, Antaris Fowler.” Peter’s introduction holds an uncertainty that earns him a quizzical glance from the child. “Today is his first day of school.”

  Unsure how to greet Antaris, Veda settles for an awkward “Welcome to Weston.”

  Antaris scrutinizes her in a silence that borders on painful until Peter gestures to the woman. “This is his grandmother, Simran.”

  Simran assesses Veda with equal interest before politely nodding. “Pleasure.”

  It doesn’t sound like it.

  “You as well,” Veda replies with a practiced, put-on pleasantness.

  “Please, do take a seat, Miss Thorne.” Simran’s British accent is gratingly posh yet smooth in a way that naturally develops after years in America. “I imagine you are curious about why you are here.”

  Veda is, but instead asks, “How did you know my last name?”

  “I know many things.”

  “Subtlety won’t get you anywhere with me.” Veda smiles, saccharine sweet.

  Peter’s cough sounds like a chuckle. Every eye turns to him. “Just had something in my throat.”

  Veda folds her arms, still waiting for her question to be answered. A tight expression crosses Simran’s face. “If you must know, I inquired about you, Miss Thorne. Peter tells me you spent a year studying Eastern brewing in my hometown, Bangalore, India. You were born in Maine, turned thirty eleven days ago, and do not possess Sight. Your mother was a tenured professor of theoretical Earth magic, and your father was an expert stonemaker. They Vanished when you were sixteen, during the Great Vanishing. To your credit, you did not let this tragedy stop you and went to college on scholarship, graduating with high honors in magiology and Earth medicine. You studied to be a doctor at Riverty University, where you again graduated with high honors, but quit during your internship. Pity.”

  Keeping quiet in the face of a woman who will talk more when given a stage is harder than Veda realized, but she’s motivated by irritation at Simran’s flippant attitude toward her tragedy, her life.

  “That is all I was able to gather. You see, Miss Thorne, I like to know everything about those I invite into my personal space. I want to surround my grandson with the right kind of people, if you understand what I mean.”

  Veda’s politeness dies. “Clearly.”

  Mages and Seers live, work, and are educated mostly separately because of the normalization of prejudice. Demeaning incidents, slurs, biases, and the desire to remain independent of each other are common occurrences. Casual cruelty. Mages’ actions are dismissed as harmless yet cause tremendous damage. The most extreme bigots use rhetoric involving extermination, like “breeding out the gene,” and express a desire to bring back a time when Seers were controlled by injecting them with magic-blocking serum and forcing them into compliant servitude. Where on the scale Simran lies, Veda can’t tell. Her willingness to enroll Antaris in the only integrated school in Proventia is promising, considering there are other institutions that fit her taste. More importantly, Veda can’t help but wonder what the hell Peter is thinking by allowing a proud bigot to set foot on the property.

  With over three hundred students from years one to twelve, half of whom are Seers, security has always been tight due to threats from various hate groups. Since its opening, and more so in the years since Peter took over, the academy has been vandalized, Seer students attacked walking to and from campus, and law enforcement has made it clear they watch the school closely—not to protect anyone but to arrest any Seer who steps out of line. Allowing a bigot free access to the faculty and student body is dangerous.