“No one gave me a gift when I started training,” Bram teases. “It hardly seems fair.”

Tessa hands me the package. “Open it,” she says, flopping on one of the beds. “Let’s see what it is.”

I sit on the floor and work a finger under one seam until the paper rips. Inside is a leather-bound book.

Tessa props herself up on one elbow. “Wow. Kyra must have a lot of faith in you. I didn’t get a spell book until I’d been here for months.”

I can’t help but feel a swell of pride and anticipation. Maybe I actually managed to impress Master Kyra instead of arousing her suspicion. The thought wraps around me like a warm blanket.

And then I turn the book over and my blood runs cold. I drop it as if it were on fire.

“What’s wrong?” Bram says, kneeling beside me. “Saskia, what is it?” Blood pounds so loudly in my ears that it sounds like his voice is coming from the bottom of a pit.

“This isn’t from Kyra.” I press a hand over my mouth.

For just a moment before the binding ceremony, I’d foolishly hoped the Grand Council had things under control. That maybe they really could find Latham. Punish him. Return my mother’s bones to me.

But they can’t. If I want to survive, I’ll have to save myself.

Because the spell book is covered in markings I would know anywhere. My mother’s mastery tattoo—a vertical oval inside a larger horizontal one, both framed by thick, arching lines on the top and the bottom. The small butterfly tattoo that appeared above her heart on the day I was born. The jagged scar on her collarbone that my father’s death left behind.

Acid-laced terror pushes up my throat. Latham was in this room. It didn’t matter that the door was protected by bone magic. Or that Norah has hired a bodyguard. Latham wants me to know he can get to me anytime. Anywhere.

This is a spell book made of my mother’s skin.

Chapter Five

Bram and Tessa stare at me in openmouthed horror as I explain what the book is, what it means.

It’s as if the temperature in the room has plummeted.

“How?” Bram says. “Why?”

They’re the same panic-tinged questions that dart through my own mind. But I already have the answers. “Latham wants me to know I’m not safe. That I’ll never be safe.” I swallow. “And he wants to torture me before he kills me so that my bones will be more powerful.”

Tessa inhales sharply. “Isn’t Latham the instructor who went missing at the end of last term? Why would he want you dead? How does he even know you?”