The Vellum Covenant

Some societies you join. Some you are chosen for. Some take payment in flesh. When graduate student Maya Vance is summoned to the Scalpel & Quill, the price of admission is small: one fingernail, surrendered willingly. Behind its doors she finds an anatomist's garden of exquisite horrors, twenty scholars bound by a covenant written in skin, and Kieran Thorne - the Surgeon-King who has been waiting for someone exactly like her. She should run. She should tell someone. Instead, she picks up the blade. At Blackwood University, the society's doctrine - the body is a text - is more than liturgy. Every initiation is an anatomy lesson, every kindness is entered in the Ledger, and every secret is written on flesh. As hunters close in on the society's harvests, Maya does not simply survive her ascension through the ranks. She engineers it - and cuts away anyone who stands between her and the throne. Darkly seductive and unflinchingly gothic, The Vellum Covenant asks the one question its covenant will not allow you to leave unanswered: what will you become to belong? What is written on flesh cannot be unwritten. What is cut cannot be uncut. What is taken cannot be returned. For readers of dark academia, gothic horror, and heroines who are the monster. Contains graphic violence, body horror, and disturbing themes.