Tessa stops halfway down the corridor, at a door in the center of the block of rooms.
“Let me,” Bram says, reaching for the knob. But it won’t open. He wiggles it and tries again. “It’s locked.”
“That’s strange.” Tessa reaches for the knob, and at her touch, it turns easily and the door swings open wide.
“Whoa, where’d you get a Mason-crafted lock?” All three of us startle at the voice. We turn to find an apprentice in an orange cloak studying the knob with an expression of naked admiration. He takes in our confused faces and dips his head toward the door. “It will only open for the room’s occupants.”
Tessa’s eyes go wide. “That’s amazing”—she leans toward me and lowers her voice—“and a little terrifying that it’s necessary.”
I couldn’t agree more.
The room is much larger than where I slept last night. Two beds are situated on either side of a big window, with a bureau and desk for each of us pressed against the opposite wall. A neatly folded stack of linens sits at the foot of each bed. And on one of the pillows is a gift, wrapped in brown paper with delicate designs stamped across the surface in red ink. Tessa fingers the tag. “Saskia, it’s for you.”
I take a step forward and see my name written in delicate script.
“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?”
I fill Tessa in on the details of how Latham killed my gran and my mother. As I talk, the color leeches from her cheeks. When I finish, she jumps to her feet. “I’ll get help.”
I put a hand out to stop her. “No. Wait.”
She pauses, and then as the silence stretches between us, her brow furrows in confusion. “We have to tell Norah. She’ll know what to do.”
But something inside me has gone very still. I feel as if I’ve been both hollowed out and made of stone. “It won’t do any good. Norah can’t protect me. No one can.”
Tessa’s eyes go wide. “You can’t just not tell her.” She throws a panicked look at Bram, as if pleading for support, but his gaze is fixed on the book.
He lays a palm on my arm. “Do you want me to get rid of it?”
“Yes,” I say, and then I shake my head. “No.”
The book is an abomination. An evil I can’t quite force my mind to accept.
And yet.
It’s the only thing I have left of my mother. I can’t bear to keep it and I can’t bear to let it go.
Bram studies my face, then gingerly picks up the book and wraps it in the brown paper. “I’ll put it in a safe place,” he says, “until you decide what you want to do.”
Relief sags from me as Bram slips out the door with the book. Tessa stands and paces back and forth along the length of the room. Her shoulders are curved and she chews her thumbnail as she walks. Several times she pauses, opens her mouth, and then seems to change her mind.
“Just say it,” I tell her finally.
She spins to face me. “Say what?”
“Whatever it is you’ve almost said a dozen times.”
“I …” She hesitates. “I don’t want our relationship to start out on the wrong foot.”
I nearly laugh. For me, meeting Tessa feels like thumbing through a book only to realize that I’ve already read the first few chapters. It doesn’t seem like starting so much as remembering. But her pained expression pulls me up short. It’s something more than worry about the book Latham left.
Tessa’s fingers wander to her hair, wrapping tightly around one of her curls and tugging as she stares off into the distance. She grimaces, as if unaware she’s causing her own pain. And suddenly I recognize her expression: guilt. Does Tessa know more than she’s letting on?
I sit up straighter. “What are you hiding, Tessa?”
Her eyes narrow and her expression grows fierce. “I’m not hiding anything. I’m trying to keep you from doing something stupid.”
The way she’s looking at me—like I’m a stranger who just insulted her—makes my insides go cold. I’m nobody to Tessa. I’m just a girl she met yesterday who is already asking her to keep a secret. I’m not sure which is worse—to know for certain you’re all alone or to see a glimpse of what could have been, of people who might have loved you, but to be on your own just the same.
“I’m not doing something stupid,” I tell her, my voice flat. Something in her expression changes. She sinks to the floor and rests her back against her mattress.
“But what’s the harm in getting Norah’s advice? Not telling her is reckless. Don’t you trust her?”
“I do trust her,” I say. “But involving her will just give Latham more power.”