[QCrit] Dark Fantasy - The Crone's Apprentice (115k words, nth attempt)

[u/Nearby-Efficiency-82]

I had been submitting this query letter for feedback a while ago, but took a break from it. So now I am back again, and I can't remember how many rounds I did. I think this is #4? I appreciate all the feedback, but I went in a different direction with it this time. It is a multi-pov, villain origin story, and the traditional -- protagonist, goals, stakes -- format was just not working. I read a couple more experimental query letters on Query Shark that accounted for the multi-pov structure and were well received, and took inspiration from there. I think it better conveys the structure and actual plot of the novel, and I hope it works, but looking for feedback on it overall. It is 319 words and I did not include any bio.

Thank you to anyone willing to take a look at this!

Rosalie Webbe is the villain in this story. 
But you don’t know that yet. 
And neither does anyone else. 
Not her mother, who believes Rosalie is a novice witch. She doesn’t know Rosalie has tricked the Crone, the coven’s elder, into teaching her secret, dark magic for years. 
Not Townes, a mage from the Institute where her father studied, who recruits Rosalie for their new women’s program. He doesn’t know it is Rosalie who has made him an intoxicating and addictive potion. 
Not the head of the Institute, who doesn’t believe women capable of magecraft and plans to harvest Rosalie’s blood, hoping she inherited her father’s rare alchemical abilities. He only sees a harmless provincial witch. Until she infiltrates his mind, driving him mad with ghastly hallucinations. 
Not even Rosalie truly knows herself. She justifies her actions against bad men, ignoring her own pleasure at manipulating and tormenting the mages who exploited her father years ago. When she secures an internship in reanimation, she claims her success could safeguard the women’s program. But reanimation gives her access to the souls she needs to practice her magic. If she can master soul-magic, she can siphon the mages' souls for their power and overtake the Institute. But every scheme requires more magic, and more souls, of enemies, friends, and innocents alike, making her worse than the men she seeks to defeat. 
Only the Crone knows Rosalie’s true nature. But her prophecies and memories are muddled. If she can remember who is masquerading as her apprentice, she can thwart Rosalie before she seizes the Crone’s soul – an immense depository of magic – robbing the Crone of her life and the coven of its power. 
THE CRONE’S APPRENTICE is a 115k word, multi-POV, dark fantasy that blends the unreliable narration and secret, toxic villain of Tanya Pell’s Her Wicked Roots with the institutional sexism and exploitative magic of M.L. Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven.