As the third son of the third son, Niamh Nestor is supposed to get a fae power on his sixteenth birthday. Instead he gets sentenced to a reform school for magically inclined youth, for committing a minor offence. At Carpathian Keep, he discovers a miserable world. The heads of the institution are sadistic, the teachers are cruel, the charges are mean and what is the painful sensation he feels on his neck in the evening?

The Keep hides deadly secrets, and Niamh must figure them out and escape before he and the few friends he makes bite the dust.