For sixteen years, Mackenzie Beaumont has lived behind the suffocating walls of Magnolia, the prison plantation home where shadows cling to the halls and secrets seep from the floorboards. To outsiders, she is unknown. But behind closed doors, Magnolia becomes a cage, and Mackenzie feels something inside her straining against the bars. A hunger of exploration. A calling for freedom. But everything changes the night her father returns from a long business trip with a stranger-her future husband. A man whose presence chills her blood, whose eyes hold secrets. He must crack the fragile illusion of her life, and then truth begins to rise like mist from the bayou. Her mother is hiding her true self. Her brother returns home from war. Her father is the only mortal binding their family from a world of danger. And the Marked Ones, a ruthless order sworn to eradicate those like them, are closing in. As Mackenzie uncovers the horrifying legacy running through her veins, the freedom she has tried so desperately to ignore grows stronger... and harder to conceal. Magnolia's secrets are no longer content to whisper-they are demanding to be freed. Torn between a destiny she never chose and the desperate yearning to be free, Mackenzie must decide who she is: the obedient daughter trapped in a prison, or the powerful sense to become free from it all. But claiming her freedom may require surrendering to the very darkness she fears. And once she tastes her true nature, Magnolia will never be able to hold her again.