Book 1: Trial by Fire

She’s a phoenix who can’t make fire — which, in her family, is basically a capital offense.

Shipped off to a school full of students with gifts that could level buildings, Shayla Montgomery has one semester to prove she belongs. Turns out she does. Just not the way anyone expected.

At Richmond Academy of Magic, failure has a deadline. If Shayla can’t unlock her abilities before her eighteenth birthday, she faces the Rite of Forced Ascension — a transformation designed to wipe her memories clean and hand her family a blank-slate daughter they can actually control. No pressure.

But Richmond isn’t what her family sold her. It’s dangerous, yes — full of students carrying gifts they’re still learning not to break — and it’s the first place Shayla has ever felt like she might actually belong. Because the secret her family spent generations burying? She isn’t a failed phoenix. She’s something rarer. Something they were afraid of.

Then her father shows up to finish what he started. Shayla has to choose: the version of herself her family designed, or the one she’s been quietly becoming — the one Georgios, a hybrid shifter who has seen her clearly from the start, already believes in. And for a girl who’s spent her whole life being told she’s not enough, being truly seen might be the most dangerous thing of all.

Available now and in Kindle Unlimited.

Book 2: Trial by Sea

The Phoenix has risen… but the tide is coming in.

Shayla thought the worst was behind her. After surviving her first year at Richmond Academy, she’s no longer the girl who can’t control her spark. She’s a Phoenix Guardian in training, stronger and more steady than ever.

But as her relationship with Georgios deepens, so do the complications. Georgios has secrets of his own—secrets tied to a mermaid heritage that demands a price Shayla isn’t sure they can pay. When they are drawn into a series of deadly underwater trials, their trust is pushed to the breaking point.

With a charismatic new rival determined to come between them and the Academy’s dark secrets rising to the surface, Shayla must master her powers before they are extinguished forever.

Perfect for fans of fated mates, elemental magic, and slow-burn romance. Available now and in Kindle Unlimited.

Book 3: Trial by Earth

Shayla Montgomery’s fire didn’t answer when it mattered most.

When the sanctuary barrier tore open last semester, she was supposed to bring the flame that would hold it. Nothing came. Not even a spark. Now she’s back at Richmond Academy for spring term, carrying her father’s disappointment like a second duffel bag, and the wardstone perimeter is still failing—held together by nothing but friction and hope.

Then the earth starts answering her instead.

It begins as a hum in the ground beneath her feet during a routine assessment. It ends with Shayla discovering a guardian legacy her family buried generations ago: a second path, one her father’s line was never meant to forget. Binding, not burning. Holding, not destroying.

But someone is sabotaging the ley system from the inside, and the trail keeps leading back to Councillor Varis—a woman with the authority to bury the truth and the patience to do it slowly. As the fractures spread and the people Shayla loves are pulled into the blast radius, she has to decide whether the guardian she’s becoming is strong enough to hold a school, a sanctuary, and the boy beside her together.

Some things don’t break. They bind.

A YA fantasy of elemental magic, found family, and the cost of becoming who you were always meant to be. Available now and in Kindle Unlimited.

Book 4: Trial by Wind

Shayla Montgomery survived the Earthbinding. She’s not sure she’ll survive what comes after it.

The wind tunnel beneath Richmond Academy has been unstable since the night she touched it — and it isn’t calming down. The council wants it contained. Her father wants a guardian worth the family name. And Shayla just wants to make it through one term without losing control of the one thing she can’t afford to lose control of: herself.

Then the new cohort arrives, and Shayla realizes the tunnel was never the real threat.

A silver-eyed transfer student who watches too closely. A water-shifter with a smile like a closing door and secrets to match. A quiet historian who seems to know more about Richmond’s buried history than anyone should — including the parts about guardians who never finished what they started, and the family that’s spent generations deciding who gets to try.

Somewhere in that history is an answer Shayla’s been too afraid to look for: what happens to a phoenix who never learns to fly.

She’s done waiting to find out.

Available now and in Kindle Unlimited.

Book 5: Trial by Spirit

Four trials survived. One left to break her.

Shayla Montgomery has bound water, earth, fire, and air—and paid for every single one. She’s the only guardian phoenix in a century to make it this far. But the fifth trial isn’t waiting for her to be ready.

Beneath Richmond Academy’s Ritual Hall lies a chamber no guardian has ever returned from whole: the Spirit Anchor, the hidden seventh point in an ancient boundary that has kept the mortal world sealed from something far worse for three hundred years. It’s failing. And every phoenix who has ever tried to hold it alone has burned out trying.

Shayla isn’t alone. That’s the problem.

Georgios Thalassinos has spent the whole year standing beside her—steady, quiet, closer than he ever meant to get. Now she’s learning exactly why he was placed at Richmond in the first place, and what it will cost the two of them to finish what generations of guardians couldn’t. Meanwhile, the man the Council calls the most dangerous fugitive in a decade is racing toward the same chamber—and he might be the only one who understands what’s actually coming.

With her father’s ultimatum hanging over her, her friends refusing to let her walk into the dark without them, and a boundary older than her family’s entire bloodline about to fall, Shayla has one choice left: keep pretending she can carry this alone, or finally let the people who love her prove that she doesn’t have to.

The Richmond Academy series comes to its end in Trial by Spirit—where the last trial was never about power at all. It was about who’s standing beside you when the world finally asks everything of you at once.

Coming December 15, 2026. Pre-orders are open now.