Arcana Academy (2025) is a fantasy novel by Elise Kova and the first installment of the Arcana Academy series, which blends the subgenres of dark academia and romantasy. In the narrative, a young woman named Clara Graysword has survived the criminal underworld of Eclipse City with illegal magic. After being imprisoned for inking tarot cards, a power reserved for the elite, she is offered freedom by the academy’s headmaster, Prince Kaelis. He forces her into a fake engagement and brings her to the academy, intending to use her to acquire a mythical, all-powerful tarot card. Set in the oppressive world of Oricalis Kingdom, the novel explores themes including State Control of Knowledge and Power, The Lengths to Which People Go to Survive, and Class and Social Mobility Within Elite Systems. Kova’s Arcana Academy has been a bestseller on numerous lists and will be followed up with a sequel in July of 2026.

This guide refers to the 2025 Del Rey first edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual content, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Clara Graysword, an illegal Arcanist imprisoned in Halazar Prison for nearly a year, is summoned from her cell. Having survived by inking tarot cards for the cruel Warden Glavstone, she is brought before Prince Kaelis of Oricalis, the man she holds responsible for her mother’s death and her own capture. Kaelis uses a magical tarot card to cull information from her. Under magical compulsion, Clara reveals the name of her younger sister, Arina. Kaelis sentences Clara to death at sunset.

Left alone, Clara discovers inking tools. Using her unique ability to ink any Minor Arcana card with any type of powder by adding her own blood, she creates three cards for her escape. The Page of Coins grants her the expertise to climb down the prison wall. She then enters the Farlum River, using the Ace of Cups to manipulate the water and the Nine of Cups, a wish card, to save herself from drowning. As she approaches the shore of Eclipse City, Kaelis overpowers her with magic and captures her again.

Clara awakens in Kaelis’s lavish apartments at Arcana Academy. He reveals that he needs her inking talent to obtain the mythical 21st tarot card, the World, which is said to grant any wish. After threatening her into cooperation, they’re interrupted by Kaelis’s older brother, Prince Ravin, who announces a search for a Halazar escapee. To protect Clara, Kaelis declares that she is “Clara Redwin,” the only survivor of the destroyed Clan Hermit. He claims that they’re betrothed. Though skeptical, Ravin departs. Then, Kaelis forces Clara to enter the academy as a new applicant during the annual Fire Festival.

During the festival procession, Clara searches for Arina but cannot find her. She and other applicants await the ritual of the Arcanum Chalice, in which they must draw three tarot cards representing their future, sacrifice one to the Chalice, and then magically fight a manifestation of that future. When Clara is called, Kaelis announces their betrothal. Her three cards are chosen, and, to defy Kaelis, she sacrifices the Two of Cups, which represents love. The Chalice conjures a vision of her former lover, Liam, who offers her a second chance. Recognizing the test, Clara summons a sword to “kill” the vision of Liam, passing the trial and becoming an initiate.

At the celebratory Fire Feast, Kaelis announces the year’s challenges for initiates: earn a coin on All Coins Day, pass two tests during the Three of Swords Trials, and be accepted into one of the academy’s four houses. Then, Clara speaks with Myrion, the King of House Cups, about Arina, whom she does not name.

While sneaking out of the hall to follow Kaelis, Clara discovers that Halazar guards are searching for the escapee. To dodge them, Clara ducks into an empty room that contains a mechanic mill that grinds powder for inking cards. Kaelis finds her and protects her from the guards.

Later, in the dormitory, Clara is assigned a room with Alor Ventall of Clan Tower, whose older sister, Emilia Ventall, is the King of House Swords. Then, after class one day, Clara is ambushed by another initiate, Eza, who uses a Major Arcana card, the Hanged Man, to imprison her mentally in Halazar. Kaelis rescues her and reveals that certain individuals embody the Major Arcana. Clara is the Wheel of Fortune, so he takes her to a secret chamber, the Sanctum of the Majors, where she meets the other Majors at the academy: Myrion (Lovers), Sorza (Justice), Elorin (High Priestess), Thal (Sun), and her attackers Eza (Hanged Man), Cael (Emperor), and Nidus (Tower). Some explain their powers and the personal “cost” required to ink their specific card.

Believing that Arina escaped, Clara searches for a secret passage out of the academy. She becomes trapped in a series of deadly rooms. Someone named Silas, whom she recognizes from Arina’s stories, saves her. He is the Major Chariot and has been confined to the academy by the crown. Clara persuades him to use his teleportation card to take her to Eclipse City. There, she discovers that the Starcrossed Club, her former home and base of operations, has been destroyed. However, she is reunited with her crew, Gregor, Jura, Twino, Ren, and their leader, Bristara, at a new safe house. They tell her that the club was raided the night she was captured and that although Arina is believed to be dead, no body was ever found.

Back at the academy, Clara confronts Kaelis, who only repeats the official story of Arina’s death. Then, he takes her to a secret location in the academy that houses a statue of the Fool surrounded by golden water and slots for the 20 Major cards. There, each Major can ink a golden card. Kaelis has 13, while his father has four. He wants Clara to create forgeries and swap them with the king’s cards at the Feast of Cups ball. She agrees but secretly vows to steal the World for herself.

A few weeks later, Clara and Kaelis go to Ravin’s soiree, where the first-born prince introduces Liam. Panicked, Clara flees. Kaelis follows her, and when Liam peeks in the doorway, Clara kisses Kaelis. Not long after, Eza attacks Clara again when they’re alone in the Sanctum. After figuring out how to draw her Wheel of Fortune card, she defeats him in a magical and physical battle. Kaelis must pull her off Eza; then, he carries her back to his apartments, where he reveals that Eza is Warden Glavstone’s son. Then, during a wielding class, another initiate named Luren loses control of her magic, causing her card to reverse (a dangerous magical misfire) and accidentally kill her best friend, Kel.

At All Coins Day, Clara defends King Oricalis from an assassination attempt and also saves her roommate, Alor. The king brings her to Ravin’s manor. When she gives him the golden Wheel of Fortune card she inked, he offers her any wish; she asks to see his Major cards. During the coin ceremony, she receives invitations from House Cups and House Swords but gives her Cups coin to Luren, saving her from being Marked. Alor, now an ally, agrees to search Clan Tower’s records for information on Arina.

Kaelis takes Clara to the Fool’s secret workshop. In one of the dangerous antechambers, she finds a skeleton wearing Arina’s bracelet and is devastated. With Kaelis, she carries the remains to the Starcrossed Club for burial. Bristara scolds Clara for bringing the prince and warns her not to seek the World. In the weeks that follow, Clara learns that the king killed Kaelis’s blood mother and that Kaelis longs for a better world. Clara marvels at the Fool’s workshop and returns one night to steal ink.

At a winter solstice banquet, Clara discovers that Silas helped send her to Halazar. When she confronts him, he confesses but insists that he was blackmailed. As proof of his allegiance, he gives her the schematics for the king’s card box. After passing the Three of Swords Trials by defeating Eza in the final duel, Clara is accepted into House Swords. Enraged at losing his spot, Eza attacks Clara, but Emilia kills him. Kaelis instructs Clara to move into the Swords dormitory, creating a sudden distance between them.

Eventually, Clara and Kaelis become physically intimate. Then, she completes the forgeries. On another visit to the Starcrossed Club’s townhome, Bristara reveals that she’s a Worldkeeper, a secret guardian of the World card. She explains that Clara’s mother was the last one who knew how to ink the “vessel” card needed to summon the World, a skill she passed to Clara. Bristara warns that Kaelis is descended from the Revisan bloodline and cannot be trusted.

At the Feast of Cups, the Starcrossed Club’s heist is successful. They drug the king, and Clara swaps his golden cards for her forgeries. As she escapes, Alor tells her that her mother ordered the murder of Clara’s mother. Clara keeps the real Death card, giving Kaelis a forgery in its place. Her escape is thwarted when Warden Glavstone arrives and exposes her as the Halazar fugitive. Clara fights back and uses Silas’s Chariot card to escape to the townhome.

After returning briefly to the academy to save Silas, Clara gets back to the safe house to find that it’s being ambushed by guards led by Ravin. A battle erupts, during which Ravin reveals that he is the Major Arcana Death. After murdering Bristara, Ravin fails to kill Clara with his Death card because he doesn’t know her true name. He beats her until a royal guard intervenes. Ravin then kills Silas from a distance. As the gravely injured Clara is taken away, Ravin orders her to be imprisoned in the deepest dungeons of Halazar with Arina.