Tristan Fairholm has always liked fixing things. It makes up for everything in his life he can’t mend—his parents’ divorce, his father’s alcoholism, and his little brother’s weak heart. But when he kills his brother in a car accident, he destroys the only thing he truly cared for.

He has nearly given up when a mysterious woman appears and offers him a place at her school. Along with fifteen other juvenile delinquents, Tristan is given a chance to escape penitentiary while he studies magic in the wild mountains of Canada.

As he learns to extract and shape raw magic, Tristan finds unexpected friendship in his fellow students, from lovable Rusty Lennox to mysterious, fey Amber Ashton. But when the school is threatened by a vandal who endangers the lives of everyone living there, Tristan learns that the magic they are harvesting is being put to a dark and dangerous use. While he races to uncover the vandal before his friends are harmed, Tristan must decide if his new friends and his freedom are more important than his morals.