She came to Blackwood to become an artist. He decided to make her one - on his terms.
Lyra Gallagher is twenty-three, broke, and ferociously talented. When she earns a full scholarship to the most prestigious art residency in the country, she believes her life is about to change.
She's right. Just not the way she thinks.
Julian Voss is forty-seven, legendary, and utterly without mercy. The art world worships him. His students fear him. And when he sees Lyra sculpt for the first time, he recognizes something in her hands that he hasn't encountered in a decade - raw, unfiltered genius.
He also recognizes how easy she would be to break.
What begins as an exclusive mentorship quickly becomes something far darker. Julian controls her schedule. Her sleep. Her meals. Her access to every other human being on the compound. He dismantles her confidence with surgical critiques, then rebuilds it with a single word of praise so rare it hits her bloodstream like a drug.
By the time his hands stop correcting her grip and start tracing her skin, the line between teacher and predator has dissolved - and Lyra is no longer sure she wants it back.
But Julian has done this before. Seven times. And the notebook she finds in his desk proves that every touch, every silence, every devastating word was planned before she ever arrived.
The question is no longer whether she can survive him.
The question is whether she wants to.
Canvas of Lies is a dark academia age-gap romance featuring a morally obsessive hero, a heroine who chooses her cage with open eyes, and an ending that will leave you staring at the wall. This is Book One of The Blackwood Residency series.
Content warning: This novel contains psychological manipulation, coercive control, significant age gap dynamics, sleep and food deprivation, toxic codependency, and explicit sexual content. This is dark fiction. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
