9781911746287

penguin books

Keri Lake is a USA Today bestselling author of Gothic romance who specializes in demon wrangling, vengeance dealing and wicked twists. Her stories are gritty, with antiheroes who walk the line of good and bad and feisty heroines who bring them to their knees. When not penning books, she enjoys spending time with her husband, their daughters, their rebellious Labrador (who doesn’t retrieve a damn thing) and their rescue pup. She runs on strong coffee and alternative music, loves a good red wine and has a slight addiction to dark chocolate.

Website: kerilake.com

Instagram: @kerilake

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa

Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Penguin Random House UK, One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW11 7BW

penguin.co.uk global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Published in Penguin Books 2025 001

Copyright © Keri Lake, 2024

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes freedom of expression and supports a vibrant culture. Thank you for purchasing an authorised edition of this book and for respecting intellectual property laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it by any means without permission. You are supporting authors and enabling Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for everyone. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.

Internal design © 2025 by Sourcebooks Jacket design by Sarah Hansen/Okay Creations

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

The authorised representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978–1–911–74628–7

Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

For those who feel lost in a dark and pathless wood. Believe in the magic beyond the trees.

MORTA SIA NS

S YRENIANSELVINYRA

AE T HYRIA NS

EREMICIANSORGOTHSDR YADIVIR

MA NC ERSC ORV IKA E

SOLASSIONS L UNASIERZEPHROMYTE

NYXTEROSI VESPIRIDRA CO NYSIAN

AETHYRIAN RACES

Corvikae [cor-vih-kai]—An ancient mortal tribe who went extinct due to genocide; worshipped the goddess of death; it is said that they have Corvugon blood; originated in the northern part of Nyxteros

TRAITS: DARK HAIR, LIGHT BRONZE SKIN, MORTAL

Dryadivir [dri-ad-i-veer]—A race of Aethyrians who dwell in the woods and can sometimes take the form of trees; highly intelligent and often sought for their knowledge; believed to be the ancestors of mancers; originated in eastern Vespyria

TRAITS: ROUGH BARK-LIKE OR ROOT-LIKE SKIN, BRANCH-LIKE ANTLERS, CAN MANIPULATE ELEMENTAL POWER

Elvynira [ell-vin-eer-ah]—Those who practice magic through Nexumis; highly intelligent and often sought as advisors to the king; originate from the snowy island of Calyxar

TRAITS: DARK OR BRONZE SKIN, WHITE HAIR (SOME HAVE RED HAIR AND PALE SKIN), POINTED EARS

Eremician [ehr-ray-mee-shan]—Those who come from the desert lands of Eremicia; exceptionally skilled warriors whose power is the ability to manipulate sand and fire

TRAITS: DARK HAIR, SCALY SKIN THAT CAN TURN THE COLOR OF SAND, BURGUNDY EYES

Lunasier [lune-ah-seer]—Mancers whose bloodline magic is powered by the moon; originate from Nyxteros, Draconysia, and Vespyria

TRAITS: DARK OR SILVER HAIR, PALE/SILVERY SKIN, BLUE OR GOLDEN EYES

Mancers/Manceborn Immortal humans born with blood magic

Orgoths Ogre-like beasts that are known for being extremely violent; do not possess magic but possess exceptional strength; originate from northern Solassios and Maleviarys in southern Vespyria

TRAITS: MUSCULAR HUMANOID WITH GREEN OR BLUE SKIN, SOME HAVE SHARP TUSKS AND POINTED EARS

Solassions [soh-lay-shuns]—Mancers whose bloodline magic is powered by the sun; originate from Solassios; believed to have been the first immortal mancers

TRAITS: LIGHT BRONZE SKIN, BLOND HAIR, BLUE EYES

Syrenians [sir-en-ee-ans]—Sea dwellers with long black-scaled tails and fins. They are described as mesmerizingly beautiful but dangerous, as they are vicious and enjoy the taste of mancer flesh. Found in the cold, dark depths of the Primmian Sea; some human seafarers have reported sightings in the Abyssius Sea as well

TRAITS: BLACK OR WHITE HAIR, DARK OR PALE SKIN, SILVER OR GOLD EYES. THOSE THAT DWELL BELOW THE CRUSSURIAN TRENCH ARE SAID TO HAVE BLACK EYES AND PALE GRAY SKIN.

Zephromyte [zeh-phro-mite]—A cross between mancers and orgoths; highly aggressive and competitive; shunned by orgoths

TRAITS: TEND TO LOOK MORE LIKE MANCERS BUT MORE MUSCULAR; SOME CAN LOOK MORE LIKE ORGOTHS WITH LESS MUSCLE.

GLOSSARY

Abyssal binding [ah-biss-uhl bind-ing]—The power to hold someone trapped in the caligorya

Ascendency [ah-send-en-see]—A phase, similar to puberty, when mancers begin to come into their bloodline magic

Aura Trace magic left behind that can be used to identify a mancer

Azurmadine [ah-zer-mah-deen]—An element found in the caves of Sawtooth; gives off a blue glow

Becoming Ceremony A rite of passage for young women into womanhood and sexual maturity

Bellatryx [bella-tricks]—Female warriors who are half Solassion, half Zephromyte

Caligorya [cali-gore-ee-uh]—The dark space inside the mind

Caligosi [cali-go-see]—An animal whose hide is used to make leather

Cammyck [camm-ick]—A boyshort bodysuit worn as an undergarment

Cantafel [can-tah-fell]—A spell that allows passage through the Umbravale (only a few know of it)

Carnifican [car-niff-i-can]—A mancer who has consumed too much vivicantem and becomes violent

Catallys [cah-tal-lys]—Nocturnal creature that dwells in the woods, a cross between a cat and a hawk

Celaestrioz [seh-less-tree-ohz]—Aggressive firefly-looking creature with a human face

Chicklebane A spicy herbal flower that serves as a muscle relaxer

Cleaving The ability to transport from one place to another through walls and flat surfaces

Cor of Aethyria The heart of Aethyria, thousands of miles below the surface, where the black flame burns hottest

Corvugon [core-vuh-gon]—A cousin of the drakon, a serpentine creature with four legs, feathers, a beak, and wings that breathes silver flames

Deimosi [day-moh-see]—Fears left behind from those who’ve died that take the form of shadows

Demutomancy [deh-mew-toh-man-see]—Altering blood; an outlawed form of magic

Dindleweed A powerful aphrodisiac

Drake A serpentine creature with four legs and no wings

Drakon [drah-cone]—A serpentine creature with no wings

Duoculos [dew-oc-you-los]—A condition that affects the color of the irises after injury

Emberforge A ritual to ingest the power of sablefyre; extremely dangerous—can cause deformities in those who’ve reached the age of ascendency; has only been successful once

Fervenszi [fur-ven-zee]—A potent liquor

Firebleeding Sprinkling flammapul on the tongue then making small cuts in the flesh and licking the wound to introduce the substance; causes extreme paralysis

Flamellian [flah-mel-ee-yon]—one who practices firebleeding

Flammapul [flamma-pool]—A poison that causes extreme paralysis when introduced directly into the bloodstream/wound

Forenzycaris [for-enzi-care-us]—Mancers who specialize in investigating murders and auras

Fragor [frah-gore]—A stone that can be detonated with the proper chant, causing large explosions

Glyph Symbols that coincide with a specific blood magic; they appear as scars on the palm

Golvyn [gole-vin]—Half man/half rat creature that dwells in the walls of castles

Highbloods Highborn Aethyrians, wealthy

Initios [ini-she-ose]—A ceremony performed by royalty to kick off a celebration; a blessing

Keltzig [kelt-zig]—A unit of currency in the form of a silver coin

Koryn [core-in]—Large scaly serpents that inhabit moats and rivers

Letalisz [lay-tall-iss]—Assassin for the king whose identity is often kept secret

Liro [lee-roh]—A unit of currency (greater than a Keltzig) in the form of a black coin

Lunamiska [luna-mee-skah]—My little moon witch

Mageduell [mayj-do-ell]—A fighting technique that incorporates eldritch glyphs and bloodspells

Magestrolian [mayj-uh-stroll-ee-an]—A skilled mage; a member of an elite brotherhood of mages who advise the king

Malevol [mal-uh-vole]—A demon spirit

Malustone [mal-uh-stone]—A golden stone that can inflict tragedy when given to someone

Mandrawyld Tonic [man-drah-wild tohn-ik]—A potent tonic with hallucinogenic properties derived from black mandrake and wyldwood roots

Mimicrow [mim-ih-kroh]—Bird bred by the Magestroli to serve as a spy by mimicking everything it hears

Mortemian [more-tee-me-an]—Death collector for the city

Morumberry [more-um-berry]—A sweet berry that grows on vines and is used to make wine; the leaves are used to make oil said to ward off evil spirits; the flowers are part of the nightshade family and highly toxic if ingested

Muripox [mur-ee-pox]—A highly contagious disease that causes unsightly boils all over the skin

Nectardeium [neck-tar-dee-um]—Nectar of the gods, a potent liquor

Nethyria [neh-thee-ri-ah]—The land of the dead; the realm of departed souls; the underworld

Nexumis [neck-zu-miss]—The ability to manipulate glyphs without blood magic; a practice used by the Elvynira

Nilivir [nil-i-veer]—Mancer who has lost their blood magic over time due to lack of vivicantem

Nilmirth [nill-mirth]—A potent truth serum that causes violent illness in those who lie

Pahzatsz [pah-zahts]—A root, but similar to potatoes

Pendulynx [pen-du-linx]—A long-snouted mammal, smaller than an elephant

Prilunar Light Light given off by the moon that helps nocturnal food grow and gives power to the Lunasier (a race of mancers whose blood magic is powered by the moon)

Primyria [prih-meer-ee-uh]—The ancient language of the gods, spoken by some Vespiri

Prodozja [pro-doh-ja]—The protective form of blood magic that appears in the form of an animal/insect

Pyromage [py-roh-mayj]—A mancer who can manipulate fire

Quints [kwince]—A unit of currency (less than a Keltzig) in the form of a red coin

Rapax [ray-pax]—A child predator/pedophile

Rapiuza’mej et rapellah’mej Loosely translated to take me and ravish me

Raptacy [rap-tah-see]—An elixir, originally designed as a sleeping tonic, which heightens libido

Sablefyre [say-bul-fire]—An element of the gods, forged in the Cor of Aethyria

Septomir [sept-oh-mir]—A powerful scepter that was used to create the Umbravale, powered by the blood of the seven

Serotonics [seroh-tonics]—Blood poisons often produced in illegal labs

Sexsells Those who engage in sexual acts for money

Sickhash Root A plant root sometimes given to children before bed to make them sleep

Spindling A child born to Nilivir; spindlings have no blood magic and cannot bear children (sterile)

Spirityne [spirit-teen]—Small fairy-like creature that dwells in the woods with human faces and stick-like bodies; highly aggressive; will attack in swarms

Umbravale The ward created by the septomir that divides Mortasia from Aethyria

Vein Deep lava trenches where the black flame rises up from the Cor

Venetox Steel [ven-eh-tox]—A strong metal said to have been forged in Nethyria

Veniszka [ven-iss-kah]—Aethyrian word for mortal witches who cast spells

Vivicantem [vih-vih-cant-um]—A nutrient mined from veins that is required for blood magic; without it, blood magic diminishes

Weavers Herbal sachets used to ward off bad dreams and evil spirits

Wickens Mortasian word for Spiritynes

Wrathavor A forest-dwelling demon with a voracious appetite for human meat

GLYPHS

Aeryz [air-iss]—Wind’s vengeance; a glyph that uses wind to knock an opponent back

Erigorisz [air-ee-gore-iss]—The power to levitate objects with the mind

Evanidusz [ee-van-i-duss]—To vanish into black smoke; to become invisible to the naked eye

Osflagulle [os-flah-jule]—The power of a whip made of bones; one strike can shatter bones

Propulszir [pro-pull-zeer]—The ability to repel powers; a protective glyph that prevents mind reading

AETHYRIAN GODS

Deimos [day-mose]—A mortal who became the god of chaos and fire

Magekae [mayj-ah-kai]—God of alchemy and immortality

Morsana [more-san-ah]—Goddess of death

Pestilios [pest-ill-ee-ose]—God of pestilence and famine

Vivarya [vee-ver-ee-ah]—Goddess of fertility

CONTENT NOTES

Dear Reader,

If you’re new to my writing, I want to thank you for taking a chance on my first foray into gothic fantasy. My goal is to create an enjoyable reading experience for you, so before diving in I want to clarify what you can expect in this story.

My plots tend to be intricate and layered, and while romance is one of the many elements I weave into the story, it is not the sole focus in this case. If you’re anxious for the spice, it’ll come eventually, but know that this is a slow burn. You will be tormented with pages of unbearable tension before we arrive at the climax, so to speak. Please take this into consideration as you venture into this world.

A word of caution…

This book contains a number of potentially triggering situations. You can find the full list of trigger warnings—with spoilers—on my website: kerilake.com/anathema-full-trigger-list.

PROLOGUE

Two hundred eleven years ago…

Lady Rydainn held her infant son close as she approached the glowing vein that, only days ago, had been a snarling fissure of black fire that cleaved the ground. With the two moons nearly as one, the chasm of violet lava had hardened to stone, leaving only the flickering remnants of that sinister flame. It was almost time to harvest the igneous rock, but they weren’t there for the bounty it held. They were there for the fire itself.

The men who typically guarded the vein from thieves lay in diminishing piles of ash, their bodies and armor charred to useless lumps of soot that scattered in the wind. Burned alive by a flame so hot that she could feel its radiance a half-furlong away. Sablefyre. An ancient element of the gods, forged eons ago in Aethyria’s fiery heart. A single touch turned a body to ash and blood to stone. And she had arrived to offer up Zevander, her second-born son, to it.

Not by choice, of course. Lady Rydainn would’ve sacrificed herself right then and there, if it would spare Zevander from such a horrific fate. Unfortunately, the mage who’d demanded the exchange wasn’t interested in her pittance of an offer. He wanted her youngest son and nothing less.

She forced herself to set her eyes upon the dark and corrupt soul,

where he stood alongside her eldest son and husband at the edge of the vein, watching her every step. The most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria, he was one of a few who’d mastered the ability to control the otherwise chaotic sablefyre and discovered a means to harness its deadly and divine power. He’d once been the king’s highest Magelord, a member of the exalted Magestroli, disgracefully dismissed on accusations of demutomancy, a dark form of magic decreed illegal by the king.

Cadavros. The mere thought of his name cast a shiver down her spine.

Yet, she and her husband had been forced to make a Faustian bargain with him in exchange for protection against the Solassions who hunted their family. Ruthless warriors known for their brutality and violence who’d have made sport of their execution.

In their moment of desperation, the reclusive mage had approached the Rydainns with an offer they couldn’t refuse. A powerful protection spell against those who sought their heads, in exchange for their firstborn’s blood magic—a sampling Cadavros had claimed would be used in his studies.

If only Lady Rydainn possessed the power to reverse time. She would’ve chided her stupidity, warned herself not to trust his lies. For what he’d taken from her eldest boy was far more than a sampling of his magic.

Black, beady eyes, those deep soulless sockets, stared back at her, as if daring her to run from his ghastly form. There was a time he was said to have been handsome, but the dark and forbidden magic had taken a toll on him and twisted him into a wicked beast. From the top of his head breached long branching antlers with horns that curled back. Deep grooves etched into his hardened skin reminded Lady Rydainn of tree bark, the black pulsing veins beneath said to house small serpents trapped inside his flesh.

Evil begging to be unleashed.

Cadavros’s appearance was the result of having performed the Emberforge ritual on himself, the same ritual he intended for Zevander. A rite that only young children were believed to tolerate without any

permanent disfigurement, seeing as they hadn’t yet gone through their Ascendency.

Beside the mage stood her husband and their eldest son Branimir, whose similarly protruding black veins and coarse skin marked the horrific deformities of her first sacrifice only weeks before. A sacrifice that’d proven insufficient for the greedy mage, as Branimir had suffered the same grotesque mutations as Cadavros. Though far from puberty and his Ascendency into blood magic, Branimir had already begun the physical transitions before the flame had corrupted the seed of magic that’d taken root inside of him. And while his resulting deformities weren’t as pronounced as those of Cadavros, Branimir would never know his true power—because once the black flame entered the body, it destroyed all natural blood magic.

Run, her head urged. Save them.

It was too late for Branimir, though. His darkened eyes had grown even more vacant in the fortnight since the ritual, and the sickly pallor of his skin spoke of the hours he’d been locked away in the cells beneath the castle as his father attempted to hide him from the world. An abomination, villagers would have called him and understandably so. What thrived inside him wasn’t a power of the gods but a deep-rooted malice that’d grown stronger in the weeks since the ritual.

The notion of watching her jubilant baby—an echo of the sweet, loving boy Branimir had been—suffer the same fate was an agony she couldn’t bear.

Her demands to break the devil’s bargain with Cadavros had proven futile, and he’d vowed to slaughter both boys should she fail to comply. Not an idle threat, given the many inquisitions she’d witnessed where he’d exerted his power with merciless cruelty.

Tears blurred her vision, her steps faltering as she drew closer to the vein. Her younger son lay sleeping in her arms, completely unaware of the night to come. A night that would forever change the innocent baby boy she so dearly loved.

For hours, she’d prayed to the old gods in the hopes that his fate might be changed, that he might somehow be spared. Alas, the gods

had never answered, and darkness closed in on her as the moons slipped into the shadows.

She’d have sooner taken young Zevander and fled to Mortasia, beyond the Umbravale that separated the mortal lands from Aethyria. A place believed to be nothing but a barren wasteland brimming with famine and death.

The remorse in her husband’s eyes failed to move her, anger slinking its way through her blood with renewed fervor. After all, it’d been his nefarious dealings on Solassion land that had sealed their family’s fate. She bit back the proud Lunasier magic pulsing in her veins that would’ve surely struck down her husband. How easily he’d been convinced to offer their only sons.

Lady Rydainn’s power trembled like a plucked thread, as rays of moonlight hit the sigil on the nape of her neck, penetrating the thick fabric of her cloak and eliciting a charge that hummed in her veins, rousing a cold rush to her fingertips, where it begged to be turned loose. The moon affected all Lunasier that way, and Zevander shifted in her arms, as if sensing the vibration beneath his mother’s skin.

It would’ve been years before his power came to fruition, and she’d longed for those heartwarming moments of discovery that would soon be tainted by the poison of the flame.

Cadavros approached her and reached out a bony finger that appeared more like a branch than a digit. She curled her fingers into Zevander as Cadavros stroked her baby’s soft, cherub cheek. A trail of blood followed, and Zevander stirred, letting out a quiet mewl that heightened as the small cut on his face deepened to a dark gash. One so frighteningly malicious-looking, she wondered if the tip of Cadavros’s finger was tainted with death poison. The mage reached again, and on instinct, she jerked the baby away, shielding him with her hands. Her kettled magic surged, winding around her bones and beating against her skin, demanding to punish the mage. Her baby screamed in her arms, his face red, limbs shaking. He hardly made a sound most nights, a contented baby from the day he’d been brought into the world, and it tore at her heart to hear his distressed cry.

Fighting Cadavros was futile, though. With the power of sablefyre at his command, she’d be reduced to ash like the guards who’d tried to fight him off when they’d first arrived at the vein.

A tear streaked down her cheek. “Pilazyo. Orosj tye clemuhd,” she whispered. Please. I’m begging your mercy.

Cadavros wordlessly slipped his fingers beneath the baby, and her tears turned hysterical when he gave a tug.

She yanked her child back to her, jerking the young boy to her chest. “Nith! Nith hazjo’li! Je fili meuz!” No! I will not do this! He is my son!

Zevander’s outcry as Cadavros pried the boy from his mother’s arms stirred her instincts. On a whim of madness, Lady Rydainn lurched for the beastly man who carried her son toward the smoldering vein, but a force struck her throat, knocking the breath out of her. Black smoke crawled from her mouth, choking out the words she’d longed to say. Stop! I surrender myself!

Cadavros didn’t even spare her a glance, his invisible grip unyielding.

Lord Rydainn strode toward his suffering wife, but as he neared, his leg snapped beneath him with the gut-twisting sound of splintering bone. His cry echoed through the surrounding forest, and he fell to the ground, the limb bent wrong at the knee.

Branimir didn’t move, his murky eyes vacant and lost.

In spite of the pressure at her throat and the lack of breath in her lungs, Lady Rydainn called out for her son, reached for him, to no avail. Needles of terror prickled her spine as Cadavros held the baby in the crook of one arm while stretching a roughly tessellated hand into the black flame that rose up from the glowing vein. The black ember he captured flickered in his palm, and Zevander’s cries quieted, the child seemingly mesmerized by the sight.

Lady Rydainn whimpered and quailed, her knees weak with defeat. Before she could shutter her eyes from the horror, Cadavros shoved his palm against her baby’s mouth, smothering him with the black flame.

Zevander kicked and writhed, his tiny feet dangling helplessly from his captor’s grasp. Rage and anguish shook her body, the endless stream of tears creating an irritating blur in her eyes.

Branimir shifted on his feet, all too aware of how ravenously that flame consumed, judging by the way he growled and slapped at his ears as if he were feeling his younger brother’s pain.

The trauma that both of her precious sons were made to suffer tore at her heart with jagged teeth. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she watched the black flames emerge through her Zevander’s skin, licking the night air like the dark tongues of serpents.

Zevander’s struggle ceased, his body limp. The flames died, settling across the baby’s flesh in wicked black swirls.

The darkness had accepted and branded him.

An eternal curse.

Cadavros lifted the baby and drew his noseless face over her son’s naked chest. His mouth opened impossibly wide, and he shoved Zevander’s head inside.

A scream rattled in futile misery inside her chest, as Lady Rydainn watched in horror.

The mage let out a boisterous roar and yanked the child from his mouth. He tipped his head, inspecting the black markings on her baby’s skin. A deep, guttural sound rolled in his chest, and he snarled, snapping his attention back to the flame. “Quez sa’il?” What is this?

He looked back to the boy, running his finger over one of the markings on his chest. Growling, he struck the infant’s face and tossed him into the flaming fissure.

“No!” The scream that echoed through the forest could’ve roused the old gods from their slumber, as Lady Rydainn shook and cursed their names, demanding they set her free.

Lord Rydainn howled in agony, crawling toward the vein with his horribly mangled leg dragging behind him. “You bastard! You fucking bastard!”

Cadavros roared again, smoke curling from his skin, his body trembling. He reached back into the flame, lifting the boy, who neither screamed nor cried. He didn’t move at all.

Agony clawed at her heart as she examined her baby from afar, eyes searching for a single sign of life. The blankets that’d swaddled him

had burned away, leaving him completely exposed, his head cocked to the side, eyes still closed.

Is he alive? Oh, gods, let him be alive!

Snarling again, Cadavros held the boy in front of him, looking upon him with the kind of malice that curled her stomach.

“Pilazyo.” She shook with the plea. “Jye suaparcz vitaez.” Spare his life.

Lingering wisps of smoke drifted over the mage’s face, and she caught the glisten of raw flesh across his bark-like skin. It was then that Lady Rydainn realized: in his attempt to harm her son, he’d somehow suffered pain himself.

The pressure at her throat subsided, and sapped of all will, she crumpled to the ground. When those cloven feet stood before her again, she lifted her gaze to see Cadavros handing back her listless child, carelessly holding him by his arm as if he were nothing but a sack of meat and bones. Feeble arms outstretched, she reached for Zevander and cradled him against her. A searing heat burned her skin, but she refused to let him go.

“Is he alive?” Lord Rydainn’s voice swelled with misery as he clawed at the ground toward them. “Does he live?”

She ignored him, her anger still too razor-sharp to care about his suffering, as she lifted her son to her face, noting the warm puffs of air coming from his mouth.

Thank the gods! He still breathed. On a tearful exhale, she held him tighter and kissed the top of his head. Her sweet child had survived being cast into sablefyre, a fate which should’ve turned him to ash.

Yet, he had survived. By the miracle of the gods, he’d been spared.

The baby awoke, and the once innocent blue of his eyes showed a gradient of wine red with swirls of orange and gold that converged at the center in a black eclipse. The silvery wisps of hair that’d begun to grow had burned away. Gone was the soul of a harmless, loving child. In his place lay an aberration that the gods would surely forsake.

Squirming in her arms, Zevander cooed and babbled, a peculiar sight given what he’d suffered moments before. The gash on his

face had blackened into a deep groove that mirrored the vein from which he’d been pulled. At the edges of the wound, smaller black veins branched out like rivulets on a map.

She ran a trembling finger over them, and on contact, she recoiled at the scorching pain that streaked across her skin. “How could you do this?” she whispered, lifting her gaze to her husband. “How could you do this!”

Lord Rydainn sobbed in the distance, and her hatred for him grew with every new discovery of her son’s curse.

Branimir approached, his eyes wide with wonder. Tears welled in her eyes at the memory of Zevander’s birth, when Branimir had looked upon his infant brother with the same curiosity. How precious and innocent it had been then, those memories nothing but a long ago dream.

He reached for Zevander, running his finger over the marking on his chest, a curious black swirl that’d seemed to anger Cadavros. On closer examination, there were words written in ancient Primyrian embedded in the swirl in a way that reminded Lady Rydainn of a wax seal across his heart. Branimir’s lips twisted to a snarl as he whispered the words that stabbed her conscience. “Il captris nith reviris.”

What is taken will never return.

PART ONE

Present day…

CHAPTER 1 MAEVYTH

The Village of Foxglove Parish

The forest hadn’t eaten in a while.

I peered past the macabre archway into the depths of Witch Knell, the cursed stretch of woods where sinners went to die. It’d earned its name centuries before as a place where witches had once been sacrificed, its grim history upheld as a form of banishment for the heretics and morally corrupted. The Eating Woods is what the villagers called it because sometimes the carcasses of those cast off were recovered along the edge, their bodies having been stripped of skin and flesh. Some so badly ravaged that only the metal cuff of their shackles confirmed them as the Banished.

Sharp bones and knotty sticks covered in hoarfrost twisted around each other to form the ominous entrance to the woods. Flanking either side of it, the gnarled and weathered oaks smothered in icy webs of thorny briars weaved an impenetrable wall that stretched for hundreds of acres to either end. A heavy gloom of overcast offered little light to see through the maze of crooked trunks that reminded me of corpses twisted in pain and reaching for the sky. Wild and hungry, the forest awaited its next meal, which was due to arrive at precisely noon.

I stared at my weathered boots, the tips of which didn’t quite meet the rime-dusted rocks directly below the archway, the boundary that,

once crossed, awakened the monster on the other side. It was the closest I’d ever stood to the nefarious threshold. Curious as I’d always been to know what existed beyond it, I didn’t dare set foot inside that misty labyrinth of trees. No one did, unless by force, because the Eating Woods never returned what was given.

A wintry gust rippled the hem of my black dress, the tickle at my calves taunting my nerves. The cape around my shoulders did little to shield me from the punishing cold that gnawed at my bones. Yet it wasn’t the wind or cold that left me shivering but the rumors of what lived amongst the trees.

Some villagers whispered stories of the wrathavor, a demon with a voracious appetite for human meat, a punishment from the indigenous people who’d been pushed from these lands to the north. Others told stories of wickens, small woodland fairies that housed the souls of scorned witches, who lured and scavenged the lost by mimicking familiar voices. Most in Foxglove Parish, including the governor, believed the angel of judgment dwelled in the woods and punished those who’d rejected their beloved Red God.

Whatever it was, it ate indiscriminately. Not all who were banished were bad, and the forest had been known to snatch a toddler once or twice. Even a small baby.

I was no more than a few days old when I’d been abandoned in front of that cursed arch in a wicker basket, a single black rose upon my chest. No one knew who’d left me there, but every villager speculated that, whoever they were, they must have hoped the woods would eat me as well.

Fortunately, someone had found me and placed me on the doorstep of the Bronwick family. Otherwise, I’d probably have ended up like so many others who’d fallen victim to the forest’s voracious appetite.

So many souls. Hundreds, maybe. The man I’d called grandfather, Godfrey Bronwick, was likely one of them. He was said to have wandered beyond the archway after too much morumberry wine and gotten swallowed up in its misty depths.

No one had braved searching for him there, not even Father.

Father.

A formal letter, held loosely in my fingertips, flailed for its freedom. Ornate calligraphy decorated the thick parchment. It’d arrived that morning, sealed in red wax with the royal stamp of the king. A fancy way of confirming that my adoptive father had been killed while serving the fanatical Sacred Men, the religious branch of the Vonkovyan armies that ruled with an iron fist over most of the continent. A small faction of defectors maintained a hold over Lyveria in the northern part of the continent, and my father had ventured there as a missionary to convert the Lyverians for the glory of our good country.

Two months had passed since he’d gone missing, which had left me and my sister Aleysia in the care of our step-grandmother, Agatha. An intolerant woman who’d probably have tossed the two of us into the woods herself if my grandfather hadn’t insisted otherwise in his last will.

“What now?” I murmured as I stared through a mist of tears into the endless dark wood, trying to imagine what the future might look like.

Unwed girls without a father to protect their claim suffered one of two fates. They were either promptly forced into marriage or sent to serve the church as one of the Red Veils, clergywomen ordered to worship obediently until death. Even if I wanted to be married, and I certainly didn’t, the whole parish looked upon me as a pariah, so the odds of a respectable suitor were slim.

Which left only one option, and I’d have sooner raced straight into those woods than suffer the horrors I’d heard befell the Red Veils, the least of which was having their tongues cut out for a vow of silence. Those deemed most impure were said to suffer the worst indoctrination, often beaten into submission and made to endure long bouts of isolation.

Even then, pangs of anxiety clenched my chest at the thought of being sequestered from my sister. She was the only person who’d ever shown me love unconditionally, the only person willing to see beyond the cursed baby left near the Eating Woods, in spite of what it meant

for her reputation. As the blood heir of Grandfather Bronwick, she was more likely to be wed, though not to anyone of her choosing. If I were forced into servitude, I’d only see her at the occasional Banishing, where clergy were required to attend.

The many times Agatha had threatened to send me off to the convent to glean some piety had all but sealed my fate.

Of the two evils, at least marriage would’ve offered a life outside of the claustrophobic temple where the clergywomen were forced to reside. Worse still, as a Red Veil, I’d be at the mercy of Sacton Crain, the most senior member of the church, who’d undoubtedly go out of his way to make my life an absolute hardship. Known for his unyielding expectations and veiled misogyny, but also for his unorthodox punishments, which included bare bottom spankings over his knee.

The paper crumpled in my fist, as I imagined such a thing.

I refused to be subjected to him.

Or any man, for that matter.

While I’d hardly known my adoptive father and held little love for him as a result of his constant absence, his existence had not only served as a buffer between Agatha and me, but also protected me from ever having to consider life as a Red Veil.

His death was a tragedy in every sense of the word, and for the first time in my life, I feared what lay on the horizon.

A damn fine mess you’ve left. And for what?

The ire I harbored toward my father was wrong, I knew, but— damn it all—had he even considered the consequences? The mere possibility that he might’ve died and left his family to suffer the wrath of his beloved faith? That my sister and I would be placed in the care of the one woman in the world who loathed us more than the bone spurs she incessantly groaned about.

I wanted to scream into the void, to throttle fate with both hands for having dipped its poison-tipped fingers into our lives.

The somber kindling of grief that simmered in my chest curled and lashed, fueled by my growing anger, a quiet flame that rose with a burgeoning need to be set free. Emotions I was forced to keep hidden

for fear of looking possessed by evil, as girls often were when they felt too much.

My fury refused to be smothered as the bleak picture rooted itself into my reality.

Damn you! my head screamed.

Though some may have been inclined to fault the defectors for my father’s murder, I didn’t. I blamed the revered god who demanded blood, ripped families apart, and banished the innocent. An invisible entity feared more than the creature that dwelled in the woods.

I glanced down at the letter, on the back of which, out of resentment and spite, I’d written, The Red God isn’t real. These words scratched at my skull every time I knelt to pray and nearly spilled from my lips with every lashing I’d suffered for some obscure offense I’d committed against him. To utter such a phrase would label me a heretic. A witch.

What fodder that would’ve given the whole damned parish. Had anyone found the letter and what I’d written, I’d have been banished to these very woods. I could’ve burned it, and all traces of my blasphemy would’ve disappeared. But I longed to cast those words into the wind and see them carried to a place where no one would be brave enough to retrieve them.

Into the depths of those starving trees that would eat them whole. I opened my mouth for the scream begging to cut loose. The emotions remained strangled in my throat, like the many times I’d been forced to swallow them back in the face of ridicule, scorn, and rejection. I’d learned at too early an age that a girl’s scream drew nothing more than apathy. Besides, what did it matter now? Father was gone. Our lives would never be the same from that day forward.

The letter slipped loose and flitted just onto the other side of the archway, where it lay on the frost-veined ground, oddly floundering like a fish in the dirt. The words I’d written trembled across the page, flickering in and out of view with each flutter of the breeze until the parchment settled. Then a new phrase appeared where mine had been, in the same hasty strokes of my own handwriting. God is Death.

What did that even mean?

An unsettling wisp of confusion crawled over my neck as I reached for the letter, daring my hand past that forbidden archway. I needed to see those words up close, to confirm that I wasn’t imagining them. I bent to retrieve it, and a hot streak of pain zipped across my forearm. “Dammit!”

I lifted my arm, showing the sleeve of my dress torn up to my elbow, where blood trickled from a gouge down the underside of my forearm. A treacherous piece of bone, sticking out from the archway, held a small piece of blood-stained lace from its sharpened tip. A sizzling sound rose over the rustling of the trees, and as I watched, curls of white smoke drifted from the bone and once-red drops of blood seared to black.

Light shimmered across my eyes, the entire forest rippling with a translucent sheen. My eyes fixated on the peculiarity, trying to discern whether what I was seeing was real. I’d heard stories of seafarers happening upon a glimmering wall miles out from land, one that altered their navigation and sent them sailing right back where they’d come from. Those were the lucky ones, though. Others were said to have been swallowed by squalls that reached the sky, their ships never seen again.

As I cradled my wounded arm, a strong gust lifted the letter from the ground, carrying the stark white paper deeper and deeper into the dark trees. The errant breeze loosened my hair from its black rose clip, tousling the long and unruly tendrils across my skin like ghostly fingertips, tickling dreadful thoughts of what might happen if the wind carried that paper into the hands of the governor or Sacton Crain.

Or maybe it was the fear of not caring if it did.

As quickly as it’d stirred, the wind died around me. As an eerie silence caressed my bones, I watched the letter fade from view. Gone.

Glimpsing the blood still oozing from my cut, I turned to go home to wash it.

A crackling sound caught my attention.

As before, I peered through the misty woods in search of its source. Quiet. Calm.

Nothing.

The faint sound of a child’s giggle rose up through the trees in a ghostly reverberation. “Maevyth,” the voice whispered in whimsy, the sound of my name casting a chill across my skin.

I swept my gaze over the shadowy tree trunks, recalling a cardinal rule of the Eating Woods: Never answer to your own name. “God is death,” it said, echoing the words from the paper. A blast of blackness shot out from the arched entryway toward me, knocking me backward.

The frost-coated ground slammed into my spine, banishing the air from my lungs, and I turned onto my side, coughing. A treachery of ravens took to the sky overhead, the swoosh of their flapping wings punctuating their loud caws. They missiled over me as if they’d been spooked by something, and my own heart hammered inside my chest, my lungs rebounding with air.

The commotion settled, and with panting breaths, I turned back to the archway. Only one bird remained, impaled through the breast by a sharp bone, a spike of malicious ivory like the one that’d cut my arm. Fighting to catch my breath, I watched the helpless bird twitch and caw, its blood dripping over the pale white stones piled at the foot of the archway. A glint struck its eyes, drawing my attention to something unusual about them.

With an unwavering gaze, I slowly pushed to my feet and padded toward it, every muscle trembling, but by the time I reached it, the raven had stilled. Even lifeless, the strange, silvery hue of its eyes was striking. The glassy, eldritch gleam held my reflected form in a chilling glimpse of a world beyond. A place I feared to imagine. Death.

And as I stared back at the poor creature, watching the blood trickle down the branches, a heavy ache swelled in my chest.

After a quick glance around to ensure no one was watching, I reached up, cupping my hands around the large bird’s wings. Warm blood oozed down my wrist, mingling with my own as my tugging creaked the bones and wood of the structure. My arms trembled with

the effort, but the bird wouldn’t budge. Groaning, I tugged harder. “C’mon now. Come loose!”

Bracing my boot against the archway, I channeled all my muscles into the task.

A loud squawk sent me flying backward, and I let out a scream, tumbling for the second time. The bird lay on the ground beside me, its chest faintly rising. As it writhed, blood trickled from the corner of its beak, red against the ghost-white snow. It somehow pushed to its feet and hopped two steps toward me before tottering to the side. Tears welled in my eyes, as the helpless creature opened and closed its beak, as if it tried to tell me what was wrong. I could almost hear it begging for mercy. Its wound was fatal, the bone that’d pierced its breast too big to have spared any vital organs, and its life was slipping away before my eyes.

Do something. Do not let it suffer.

My stomach twisted at the thought. I’d once watched Grandfather cut the throat of a days-old fawn that’d been gravely injured by a hawk. An act of mercy, he’d called it.

From the pocket of my skirt, I reluctantly removed a small paring knife that I kept for carving and fruit. One Agatha had tried to confiscate a few times without success. Hands trembling, I slipped it from its makeshift cloth sheath and pushed to my knees to cradle the bird at my thigh. As it struggled against me, I exhaled a shaky breath and stretched its neck as I slid my blade across the suffering creature’s throat, flinching at the same time my stomach curled. An act of mercy. Until that moment, I’d never killed a living thing with my own hands.

What a terrible burden to watch something die.

CHAPTER 2

MAEVYTH

Frigid breaths of remorse stuttered out of me in white puffs, and I loosened my grip to find the bird no longer stirred at my side. It’d gone stiff already.

I glanced around again, wiped away my tears, and gathered it up, cradling it in my arms as I hustled toward the edge of the wood. Beneath a winterberry bush, I found a flat rock and scraped a modest hole in the dirt there. The bite of early winter air thickened my hands, numbing them as I hurried to finish the task. Once I’d dug deep enough, I laid the bird inside and buried it. The toxic berries would keep the critters away, but for good measure, I plucked a few, sprinkling them over the inelegant grave.

The men of our parish believed the birds to be an omen of death. They believed the same of me, too, so maybe I shared a kinship with the foreboding creatures. It was said that on the day I’d been found, ravens had flocked around my basket. I liked to think they were guarding me, but some thought it was a sign.

The whole parish had branded me as cursed ever since.

The lorn.

The name that’d been drawn like a scar across my heart at my first baptism, when I’d devoted myself to their god and bound myself to their merciless savior. But just like the woods that ate voraciously, my piety wasn’t enough to earn their good graces. They still cast me off as something aberrant.

I could only imagine what they’d say about a silver-eyed raven.

Movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned to where a small, thatch-roofed cottage stood at the edge of the forest. A whitehaired woman, half bent at the waist, gathered a cord of wood from a stacked supply, enough for winter, which left me wondering how she’d cut it down herself. No one would’ve lent a hand, after all.

While I was shunned by the villagers, she was truly feared. The Crone Witch. Rumor had it that she’d murdered her husband and ate the hearts of children. I suspected she’d have been cast into the Eating Woods like every other person accused of witchcraft, if not for her healing skills that, years ago, had saved the governor’s son from a bad case of somnufever, a deadly fate for most. The Crone Witch proved useful sometimes, garnering her more clemency than I’d ever been given.

As she hobbled back to her cottage, she paused and turned toward me. An inexplicable dread settled in my bones. Had she seen me? Would she tell someone what I’d done? If anyone found the buried bird, I’d be questioned. Probed. Possibly exorcised for bad humors.

I wiped my wrist against the black fabric of my dress as I puzzled over all the possible consequences of my actions.

I could’ve unburied it, tossed it back into the woods, but unearthing the dead was a sin, and in my book, even ravens counted as precious life.

The swooshing flap of wings interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to see other ravens pecking around the ground for the berries I’d just scattered.

“Hey! Go away!” I said, waving my hand to shoo them off. In all the fuss, I caught sight of a red banner with a cross in the distance.

The proclamation of the Banished.

So focused on the approaching congregation, I didn’t see Lolla, housekeeper and confidante to my step-grandmother, making her way across the yard toward me until she spoke. “What in God’s eyes are you doing, Maevyth?”

Startled, I turned to see her keeping a safe distance from the woods. She waved me over with her one good hand. The other arm had been crudely amputated by the Sawbones, a band of burly bottom-feeders

who collected debts on behalf of Governor Grimsby. Lolla, or Delores as everyone else referred to her, couldn’t pay her taxes and had been forced from her family home. Grandfather felt sorry for her and had taken her in years ago to serve as a companion for Agatha, though my step-grandmother often treated the poor woman like a lowly house pet.

“The governor is coming, and you’re here frolicking by those wretched trees with those godforsaken birds. Please come. Quickly.” It didn’t matter that I was nineteen, a well-seasoned woman to those who kept track of such things, but she still treated me as a child.

And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I still obeyed.

Abandoning the grave, I hid my wounded arm behind my back as I made my way toward the older woman. The moment I stepped within arm’s length, she set forth with her one-handed fussing. The sleeve of her dress had been pinned to hide her mutilated elbow. Sawbones never hesitated to hack first and ask questions later, and their horrific handiwork spoke of their apathy in the task.

“By god, if anyone had seen you just now…” she said, brushing what appeared to be nothing but the wind from my skirts. Unlike the floral brocade that patterned the midnight blue corset over her brown kirtle, my dress was the simple black that I’d been forced to wear since I was a child. At my throat dangled the signature black choker and trinity cross that the governor had long decreed I wear as a reminder of the mercy granted by the Red God. The same symbol my father would have been wearing when he was slaughtered in the name of the Sacred Men.

I ran my finger over one of the embossed flowers at her shoulder, longing for the day I might wear something so elegant.

Ignoring my caress, she kept on with her fussing and prattling. “My goodness, ravens, of all things. They’d have surely branded you a witch.”

The villagers of Foxglove had branded me worse. After my arrival, we’d suffered the coldest winter in history, and food had become scarce. The following summer had yielded diseased crops that’d withered the harvest. According to them, I was the harbinger of famine, a mere infant responsible for blight. “You always said a witch held far more dignity than any parishioner.”

Brows pulled to a pained expression, she shook her head. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I need to keep my damn mouth shut around you and your sister. Always fueling your feistiness. Particularly Aleysia.” She tucked a stray hair behind my ear, the unruly curls refusing to stay put. “Those words will be your demise. Forget them. And any ridiculous comment I may have spouted off without thinking, while you’re at it.” As she reached for my arm where my torn dress showed the blood still staining my skin, she frowned. “What in heavens…”

“Cut myself on a branch is all. Nothing serious.” I didn’t bother to mention the raven. Even as much as I loved and trusted Lolla, she feared the birds like everyone else.

“Well, get it cleaned up. Can’t have you looking this way for the Banishing.” Lolla’s frown softened as she stroked a gentle hand down my long black hair. “How are you holding up?” she asked, undoubtedly referring to the letter.

“In dire need of Grandfather’s most potent batch of wine.”

A smile curved her lips, and she rolled her eyes. “Aren’t we all? But there’ll be none of that this early in the day.” She rested her palm against my cheek and sighed. “It’s nearly time.”

The words I’d been dreading.

CHAPTER 3 MAEVYTH

Igave one more backward glance toward the forest behind me.

“Come,” Lolla said, locking her arm in mine and urging me across the stony road to our two-story cottage covered in moss and vine. Aside from the Crone Witch’s hovel, the nearest dwelling was over two thousand paces away—steps I’d counted a number of times on the way to Foxglove. No one else gambled to live so close to the Eating Woods. It just so happened to host the perfect soil for morumberries, which had made it impossible for my grandfather to resist, in spite of the rumors of what lived amongst the trees. Our cottage sat on the outskirts, far enough from town to feel completely isolated but still close enough to feed gossip.

A weathered sign sticking up from the perpetually mist-covered lawn stood half-cocked in front, the paint for Black Sparrow Vineyards chipped and broken. My grandfather had built a legacy on morumberry wine, one that had quickly declined when Agatha had been granted ownership after his death. Debts had piled with her extravagant spending, and she was forced to sell off nearly all of Grandfather’s possessions, save for the cottage, which had since stood in disrepair. The care Grandfather Bronwick had put into the vineyard had withered with neglect, and the berries eventually failed to produce. With what little money Agatha had left, she’d invested in a mortuary, deciding the dead would never leave her penniless. Grandfather’s beloved wine cellar had become a morgue, and ten acres of the vineyard now housed the dead

in an unkempt cemetery. The remaining acreage of viable morumberry vines served as the primary ingredient for the oils and poisons Aleysia and I were tasked to make for Agatha.

Yes, poisons. While many used them as an effective means to control rodents and pests, others found more ominous purposes for the little black vials. What better way to ensure business than to forge a path toward death?

Once inside our home, Lolla hustled me past what had become the showing parlor to the washroom. As I stood beside the water basin, dabbing my cut with a cloth, she scoured the cupboard for some healing cream. Nothing but snake oil, really. The stench of the toilet behind me, as if something had died in it, mingled with my rattled nerves over the impending banishment. The unsettling depth of my wound certainly didn’t offer any calm, either, and I swallowed back the urge to lose my breakfast, as I watched the edges come apart with her cleaning.

“You don’t think it needs stitching, do you?” I frowned at the fact that I could see enough pink flesh to knot my stomach. For as many dead bodies as I’d watched come and go, some of which I’d had to wheel into the morgue myself, I still couldn’t handle the sight of blood.

After a quick examination, she gave a nod. “Wrap it up as quickly as you can. It’s nearly noon.” She shuffled out of the washroom. Groaning, I swiped up the cloth she’d left and wound it around the cut. Using my teeth, I one-handedly secured it with a knot and yanked my black sleeve over it. With it properly hidden, I made my way up the staircase to the second floor.

While there were plenty of bedrooms on the upper level, Aleysia and I shared a room in the cold attic, up another enclosed staircase. The two of us would’ve been perfectly fine living on our own, but Vonkovyan law dictated that unmarried women were not permitted to own property.

When I entered the bedroom, Aleysia stood staring out the window, her deep burgundy dress a splash of color against the dull, gray walls. From the ceiling over her head hung small white sachets decorated in dried flowers and filled with herbs. Weavers. Aleysia and I made them

to keep bad dreams away, an affliction from which we both suffered. Wild, blond curls fell about her shoulders, a contrast to my black witch locks, as Agatha called them. While my features may have been darker than those of my older sister, her personality was far more reckless. A trait that rankled Agatha more than my cursed reputation. Having been Father’s natural-born daughter certainly didn’t earn my sister favor in Agatha’s eyes.

I ambled up beside her, taking notice of what had undoubtedly captured her attention. Beyond the window, two lines of clergy dressed in red and black robes, the Sacred Men, led who I presumed to be the prisoner. Behind them followed two militant Vonkovyans who resided in Foxglove to keep the peace. Garbed in peaked black hats, pauldrons and bracers, their black gambesons loomed like a shadow behind the red surcoats they wore.

A long succession of parishioners who had no choice but to attend followed after them. But it was the Red Veils who held my attention; the sight of them roused a fresh swell of anxiety. “Are we going to talk about Father?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Aleysia answered coldly. “I find it difficult to care for a man who was absent for most of my life.”

“I understand, but you know what this means, Aleysia. I suspect you’ll wed fairly quickly. But I’ll become one of them.” I nodded toward the women with their high red veils, a prophetic omen of what would become of the little freedom I’d enjoyed up until that letter arrived. “Agatha would see to it.”

“Have I not vowed to protect you, Sister?”

I recalled the days of hiding in Grandfather’s cellar and the pinky promises whispered in the dark. “Since we were children. But how would you accomplish that now? My future diverges one of two ways, and there isn’t a soul in Foxglove Parish who would chance a marriage with the lorn. Even if there was, that fate is only fractionally better than the other, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I will marry, and I will claim you as my ward.”

“Only if your husband allows such a claim,” I argued.

“Oh, he will.” She smiled, as if she were already aware of her unnamed suitor’s intentions. “But let’s not talk about that now. I’m exhausted by the worries of Father’s death.”

A mutual sentiment. But unlike my incautious older sister, I couldn’t turn off my thoughts so easily.

“Do you think the Sacred Men wear anything under those robes?” Aleysia asked, her unseemly question breaking the silence between us. “Or do you think their nether regions just sway back and forth as they walk? Like the snout of a pendulynx.”

As much as I fought my amusement, I couldn’t help but smile. “What had to die in your soul to imagine such a horrific visual? And what in seven hells makes you think it’s as long as a pendulynx snout?”

She sighed, tucking her bottom lip between her teeth. “A girl can dream.”

Biting back a laugh, I shook my head. “Disgusting. Truly.”

“You’re lying, if you say you’ve never once thought about it. The way Sacton Crain leans against you…” She took hold of my dress, leg wrapped around mine, and circled her hips against me. “And how are you, my dearest Penitent?”

Sacton Crain had always avoided me like the plague, which suited me just fine, but I’d heard he’d gotten a bit too suggestive with some of the young girls in Bible study. The thought of what he might’ve done behind closed doors roused fresh anger, but before I could dwell on it, Aleysia needled my ribs with her fingers, snapping me out of thoughts with her tickling.

Wrestling her grip, I let out a laugh, and she clutched me harder, humping my leg like a damned dog.

“No, one moment. I’m almost…just another…I promise…”

“You are positively repulsive!” I let out a howling laugh, pressing my palm against her shoulders to dislodge her from my body.

“Oh, Red God…oh, merciful lord of lust…I’m gonna…I’m gonna…”

“Girls!” The boisterous strident voice stiffened my muscles, and

with a lingering chuckle, Aleysia slowly released me. “The day of Banishing is not a laughing affair.”

Clearing my throat, I rolled my shoulders back and turned to face the wretched woman who stood at the top of the attic staircase, wearing an ecru smock under a juniper green kirtle and leaning on a tired old cane. If my features were said to be intense, Agatha’s were severe. She often wore her silvery hair pulled back into a harsh knot at the back of her head, drawing attention to her dark, sunken eyes that appeared black in some lights, and her thin gray skin stretched over sharp bones. She looked like one of the many skulls her eldest son, Uncle Felix, liked to collect.

“Sorry, Agatha,” I said.

Aleysia curtsied, a show of mocking. “Yes, terribly sorry. Banishing is a day of misery, particularly for the accused.”

“Watch your tongue, girl.” Agatha held out a pointed finger with a long yellowing nail she often used to stir her tea. “If not for your grandfather’s merciful heart, both of you would be living in squalor.”

“We’d certainly be happier,” Aleysia muttered under her breath, and I elbowed her side.

“Fix your chemise.” Agatha’s order was directed at Aleysia, who often wore her underdress off the shoulders.

Aleysia seemed to grind on her words, and her jaw shifted as she yanked the fabric back up onto her shoulders.

“What of the oil supply?” the old woman grumbled, plucking a piece of lint from her skirt. “I’m expecting great demand after today’s ceremony.” The oil we made from fruitless morumberry leaves was said to ward off evil spirits. A claim Agatha herself had made when she’d lied and told everyone that I’d suffered a possession last winter.

I’d come down with a high fever and had fallen into tremors, but leave it to Agatha to associate my illness with the occult. At the very least, morumberry leaf oil was wonderful for the skin when bathing, and it smelled as delicious as the berries.

“We have a full crate. I suspect it’ll be plenty,” I said, having been the one to bottle them myself the day before, after Aleysia had run off somewhere.

She tapped her finger against the top of her cane. “And the Snake’s Tooth?”

The morumberry oil was a ruse, mostly. Agatha’s more lucrative endeavor was poison. A deadly byproduct of the morumberry flower that, when crushed into a fine powder and consumed over time, created clots in the blood. Grandfather had long used it for rat poisoning, but it happened to have the same effect on humans as well. Sometimes it caused a heart attack. Other times it caused a stroke or an embolism in the lung. Because the outcome was never the same, no one suspected anything sinister, and Agatha never went out of her way to make her poison known. Still, she managed to generate business, both inside and outside of Foxglove.

“Plenty.” Though my part was indirect since I never sold the goods, the guilt weighed heavily on me. I tried to tell myself those who purchased the powder were ridding themselves of rats, in one form or another. Still, I’d learned over time to add crushed nasturtiums in order to reduce the potency, which helped ease my conscience.

“You better hope it’s plenty. Now hurry yourselves along. If you’re late, consider yourself excluded from supper.” Lifting her gaze, she waved toward the weavers dangling about the room. “And get rid of those damned things!” With that, she hobbled off out of view, and Aleysia let out a groan.

“I swear, if she were to get a good fucking, just once, she’d be a whole new person.”

I snorted a laugh and crossed the room for my hooded cloak, which made me feel less naked in the crowd.

Once dressed, the two of us descended from the upper attic to the second floor.

At the sound of a whistle, both of us turned toward where Uncle Riftyn strode up from behind, adjusting the cuff of his jacket. “Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes?”

His lips curved into a lopsided grin, springing forth the dimple in his cheek. Agatha’s most beloved, if the woman were capable of such a thing. With his sandy brown hair and bright blue eyes that he must’ve

inherited from his birth father, he was a startling contrast to his brother, Uncle Felix, the resident mortician who spent most of his time in the cellar with corpses. Tall and gaunt, Uncle Felix looked every bit the undertaker, and his slow, dark eyes and perpetually sullen face often sent a chill down my neck.

“Why, thank you, Uncle.” The flirtatious edge of Aleysia’s voice drew my attention to the bottom lip she practically chewed away.

“Step-uncle,” Riftyn corrected.

“Yes, step. You look very handsome, as well.”

Staring back at Aleysia with a wily grin, he gave a courteous nod and strode off.

I sailed a disapproving frown at my sister, goaded by the lingering smile on her face. “Strange. He makes the distinction as if step implies he isn’t a relation, at all.”

She shrugged, fluffing the curls that fell into lazy ringlets over her shoulders. “No blood relation.”

“That matters?” While it was true that Uncle Riftyn and his brother, Felix, weren’t related to her father by blood, they were still family. Bound by marriage. A relation the church recognized as no different than blood.

“Matters for what?” She slid on a pair of worn black gloves, feigning ignorance.

Instead of answering, I studied the grace in her movements, the blithe indifference to what anyone may have thought about her. Aleysia had always been beautiful, desired. Her golden hair was said to have been spun by angels when she was a baby. It made sense that any man, including Uncle Riftyn, would find her attractive. Had we not suffered the fate of becoming Agatha’s wards, she might’ve been courted by the most desired men in Vonkovya.

“I’ll see you at the woods,” she said, passing me to get to the staircase.

CHAPTER 4

ZEVANDER

Zevander had grown weary of the hunt. He stalked toward his prey, who stood pressed against the cave wall where the fool had trapped himself in a poor attempt to hide. A black leather mask concealed the notable scars on Zevander’s face, and the hood of his cloak shadowed his identity. Not that the man he chased would ever have the opportunity to disclose such details.

“Please! I’m begging you! Whatever you want is yours!” The man’s overfed body trembled beneath a fine silk nightshirt stained by the vintage wine he’d been guzzling when Zevander had startled him earlier.

Had the pathetic creature known who Zevander was or what he’d come to collect, he’d have probably bashed his own skull against the rock wall behind him to be spared the pain that awaited him.

Zevander strode closer, removing his glove, and held his palm upright. Summoning magic was as fragile as thin glass, yet he’d learned to traipse the finer edges with a sickening ease. His skin held intricate carvings, cicatrices of ancient glyphs that called forth the sablefyre slumbering inside of him.

He only needed to give it purpose.

The older man before him collapsed to the ground and held up a hand in defense, shielding his face in futility. As if he had the power, or strength, to block what was coming. Zevander had learned that the elder man’s magic, specific to his bloodline, was turning useless rocks into precious jewels and amulets, a skill that’d served him well in the

bustling kingdom of Costelwick. The soft blue glow of the sigil on his forehead not only alluded to the terror pulsing through him right then, but also confirmed his ethnicity as Lunasier. Like Zevander’s late mother who’d also been Lunasier, his power was born of both moons.

A golden ring sat in the folds of his pudgy finger, and Zevander reached out, snatching up his hand before he could lower it.

Zevander stared down at the chunky white stone with its tiny flecks of silver moondust embedded into the gold band. Vivicantem. All mancers, or manceborn, required the coveted nutrient, formed naturally in the Cor of Aethyria and mined once a moon cycle from deep lava trenches known as veins.

Forged by the same flame that had marred Zevander’s flesh.

Consuming the element awakened the inherent powers manceborn acquired from their bloodline, but because of the difficulty of extraction and high demand for the element, only the wealthy could afford the vivicantem-infused foods and drinks grown on farms and orchards owned by the king. Without vivicantem, power was useless, an atrophic muscle inside the body that could do nothing but wither over time.

The unauthorized mining of it was a crime punishable by execution, so those who couldn’t afford it eventually lost their magic, while wealthy hoarded the precious mineral. Wearing vivicantem as jewelry to boast their status was a sickening reality that prodded Zevander’s rage as he studied the purity of the stone. Nothing but ornaments to decorate gorged bodies.

“Aethyrians starve while you flaunt your riches,” he said, tossing the man’s hand aside.

The man took hold of the index ring and tugged. “It’s yours. You can have it. Enough to last you a month, at least.”

As he struggled to remove it, Zevander raised his palm, and a black mist swirled then shifted to an obsidian flame in the center of his hand. He unclasped his arm bracer, showing the back of his palm and wrist, where a scorpion rippled as it came to life beneath his skin.

The man’s eyes widened. “Are you a high mage?”

Zevander snorted at that. “Worse.”

Realization seemed to dawn on the man’s face as his brows pinched together. “You’re a Letalisz.”

An assassin for the crown. Most of Zevander’s prey were commissioned by order of the king, and he’d learned to dispense of his quarry with a very skilled slice of a blade.

But he hadn’t come on orders of the king, and he had no intention of drawing his blade. The brand of magic he intended to inflict on the man was forbidden, an ability Zevander had managed to disguise most of his life.

“Why?” The man shook his head. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Why me?”

“Because you breathe.” Zevander threw his hand forth, sending a blast of flame over the man, whose screams and cries of pain echoed through the cave.

Within seconds, his flesh and bones had burned to ash.

Zevander plucked a dark, red sphere from atop the pile and deposited it into a satchel at his hip. Bloodstone, derived from a form of demutomancy, an outlawed magic that had cursed Zevander’s family for centuries. It essentially involved boiling the blood of his victim into a hardened mass, which they expelled out of their mouth before the body combusted into a cloud of black dust. Had anyone known he possessed the forbidden power, he’d have been hunted down and brutally destroyed by the king’s Imperial Guard.

Through the remains of the ash, he rifled a finger in search of the white stone hidden there. The gold band had melted away, leaving only the chunk of vivicantem.

Zevander studied it for a moment, then plopped it into his satchel alongside the rest of the man’s remains.

CHAPTER 5 MAEVYTH

Acold wind blew through the hood of my cloak as I stood beside my sister, rubbing my hands together to stave off the frigid bite. On the other side of me stood Lolla, and next to her were Agatha and Uncle Felix. All of the parish, perhaps two hundred people in total, had gathered around Governor Grimsby and Sacton Crain, whose long white hair danced about his face as he stood upon the Prudence Rock.

“Under the eye of our merciful Red God, Caedes, we offer the soul of this sinner.” Hands raised to the air, he looked skyward, and I glanced around at other parishioners whose heads were tipped back, eyes closed as if they felt some divine presence amongst us. “May his sacrifice please our Lord—his bones to reinforce our good faith, his blood to rejuvenate our hearts, and his soul to cleanse our transgressions. For we are an imperfect reflection of our sacred father, and it is our duty to repent and redeem ourselves or forfeit the Red God’s protection when the Decimation is upon us.”

The Sacred Men believed the end of mankind would arrive in the form of total destruction and complete blackness and that the Red God would deliver them to the Eternal Light. They also believed that the more sinners they thinned from our community, the purer their devotion.

I felt like a liar standing amongst them, a traitor for the skeptical thoughts in my head that I didn’t dare speak aloud. Not even to Aleysia. I’d already suffered plenty of scars for transgressions against their god,

all carved into my back and legs by Sacton Crain or the Vonkovyan guards who sometimes doled out the punishments. So I played along, pretending to worship as the others because nonbelievers were also sent to the Eating Woods.

Peering over my shoulder, I noticed the parishioners standing behind us, keeping a wide berth with their eyes turned away from mine. There was a rumor that looking me in the eye could bring bad luck. No doubt, they’d have gladly traded me for the prisoner who faced banishment, suspecting that I embodied the evil they feared most.

In spite of myself, I turned back around, sparing them the discomfort.

The high hoods of the Red Veils created an arc, effectively blocking out the accused’s naked form. All Banished were stripped, divested of all possessions, so I was grateful for the obstruction even if their presence gave me hives. It was rare to see the clergywomen in their long, red vestments meant to signify their love and devotion to the faith. They rarely left the temple; socializing was undoubtedly a bit more challenging without the means to speak.

I ran my tongue across my teeth, trying to imagine its absence.

At a stirring beside me, I caught a glimpse of Aleysia holding Uncle Riftyn’s hand, her fingers curled in his in a way that seemed more intimate than comforting. As disturbed as I was to see their hands entwined, I couldn’t ignore my heart stampeding in my chest, the tickle of nausea stirring in my belly. The ceremonies always made me anxious, but for some reason, the symptoms seemed far more exaggerated this time.

All I could make out was the top of the prisoner’s head, his hair dirty and disheveled. How unbearable the chill must’ve been on his exposed flesh.

As I understood, he’d defected against the Red God and country, a family man who’d gone on a raving tirade claiming the Governor and Sacton Crain were frauds and murderers and that the Sacred Men were nothing but a cult. He’d also threatened to burn Governor Grimsby alive.

Unfortunately for him, threats weren’t tolerated in Foxglove Parish. Particularly those against the governor.

A glance to the left showed the prisoner’s wife and young son standing off at a distance. The woman sobbed into a kerchief, while her son, perhaps no more than seven years old, looked on, undoubtedly confused by the scene. She’d have been forced to attend the Banishing, and refusing would’ve placed her alongside her husband.

Of course, they’d be homeless afterward, lucky to survive the winter because the wives of the Banished weren’t permitted to own property. A cruel fate.

Unbeknownst to Agatha, I sometimes snuck bread and warm broth to Mrs. Chalmsley, whose husband had also been banished to Witch Knell. After having lost their home, she found refuge in the old granary that’d gotten damaged in a storm a few years back. I’d have to find a way to scrounge extra for this distraught mother and her child.

“Stripped of all possessions,” Sacton Crain kept on, “this man shall be judged as all on the day of reckoning.”

From a small brazier whose orange flickering I could see between bodies, he lifted a branding rod into the air, and the first twinge of panic gurgled in my throat. Breathing through my nose, I screwed my eyes shut to the sound of sizzling flesh but could not block out the roar of agony tempered only by the bit that’d been placed in the prisoner’s mouth.

“Daddy!” the boy cried out, and I dared to glance his way. Tiny hands reached out as his mother held him close, burying her face in the small child’s chest. There was nothing she could do. To interfere would’ve meant the same fate for her, leaving their child completely alone and defenseless.

“And now, we offer this sacrifice to the angel of judgment,” Governor Grimsby said. “Should your blessings favor us with a mild winter and bountiful spr—”

The woman in front of me let out a wild scream. Feeling a hard clutch on my wounded arm, I looked up to see the prisoner standing before me, his naked and dirty body trembling, eyes wild. The branding of a B that’d been seared into his cheek glistened with raw and swollen flesh.

Muscles stiff, I couldn’t move as I stared back at him. On his hand, just below the metal shackle, were five stars and a moon, the symbol of the old gods, inked onto his skin.

His eyes rolled back to terrifying white orbs. “God is Death,” the man rasped, and in the next breath, he was ripped away by the Vonkovyan guards.

The phantom mark of his icy grip lingered, as I stared down where he’d grabbed me.

Voices around me grew distant. I turned to see Aleysia speaking, her lips moving, but I couldn’t hear her.

A path remained clear ahead of me, offering a view of the robed men dragging the prisoner to the archway where I’d stood earlier reading those very words on my father’s death announcement. Words I hadn’t written.

One hard shove knocked the prisoner onto the ground at the other side. As he scrambled to his feet, the guards blocked the archway, preventing his escape, their sharp rods pointed at him. One of them sneered, jabbing at the man with his bayonet.

Everything moved slowly and fluidly, as if I were underwater.

A nudge from my left drew my focus to Lolla, who asked if I was all right. Beside her, Agatha wore a repulsed expression.

With my muscles seized in shock, I couldn’t form a single word. The silence shattered beneath a gurgling outcry.

The Vonkovyan guards broke away, opening the view of the prisoner on his knees, blood oozing around the guard’s rod impaling his chest.

An invisible force yanked the Banished man backward, into the depths of the woods.

A guttural cry echoed from the forest, and an object flew through the archway, landing at my feet.

I stared down at the five stars and a moon on the man’s degloved hand. My breathing hastened, the view shifting around me.

Blackness filtered in.

CHAPTER 6

MAEVYTH

That had to be the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Aleysia dabbed a cold cloth against my temple as I sat in the parlor of the mortuary and watched a small crowd mingle.

Much of the parish had apparently departed after the ceremony, but about half a dozen women stayed behind. Agatha’s few acquaintances from town, undoubtedly on the hunt for gossip about the bedeviled Bronwick girl who’d fainted and looking to buy the morumberry oil that I should’ve been selling in the kitchen right then.

Seeming to catch on to my preoccupations, Aleysia sent a quick glance over her shoulder, toward the women who gaped at the two of us. “Don’t mind them, the gossipmongers.”

“They look at me as if I just crawled out of a grave.”

“Well, you do look a little peaked.” The smile on her face faded when I didn’t reciprocate. “It was peculiar, is all, Maevyth.” Gentle strokes of the cloth calmed the clammy pangs of shock still gurgling in my chest. “Though I do wonder what language that was.”

Through the chaos still swirling in my head, Aleysia’s comment snapped me back to the moment. “What? Who?”

“The prisoner. When he grabbed you, he spoke strangely. Some are calling it the devil’s tongue.”

“He spoke…Vonkovyan. What do you mean? He said—” I paused, not daring to say the words aloud, for fear that she might think me crazy. I’d heard the words clear as day, though.

“Unless he was talking in reverse, that was not Vonkovyan. It was entirely unsettling.”

A flare of cold danced across my arm where he’d touched it. How had she not understood his words, when they were so undeniably clear? Worse, how could he possibly have known what was written on the back of that letter?

“Maevyth.” Agatha’s stern voice snapped my attention toward where she hobbled alongside a tall, husky man with graying hair, in his fifties or so. He wore a tailored burgundy brocade jacket and a matching high-neck waistcoat with all the trimmings that told me he had wealth. “I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Moros.”

Introduce me? Agatha never introduced Aleysia or I to anyone who mattered. She considered the two of us a burden and an embarrassment, a roadblock to high society. “He’s recently returned to Foxglove Parish,” she kept on. “He owns mining companies stationed in the Sawtooth Mountains and Lyveria, but his family is here.”

I didn’t bother to ask what he mined. After the events of earlier, I had little energy to care. Reluctantly, I pushed to my feet to greet him properly, but he rested his palm against my shoulder.

“No need, dear. That was quite a horrific event earlier. I regret that you had to bear witness to such a thing. Rest, rest.” One small squeeze of my shoulder, and he released me.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Moros.”

“The Moros name is a staple here in Foxglove. A good family name.” Agatha gave an approving nod, as though she had any awareness of what made a good family.

I feigned a smile, less impressed by that bit of trivia. Names meant nothing to me, as I meant nothing to most. But I was suspicious because… Why should I care?

“Aleysia, would you mind assisting Lolla in the kitchen?” Agatha offered an uncharacteristic adoring glance toward my sister, further stirring my suspicions.

“Lolla despises me being in the kitchen with her,” Aleysia challenged.

“Perhaps you will simply do as I say without argument, dear.” The dissonant warmth in Agatha’s voice had both of us glancing at each other, the concern clear in Aleysia’s eyes.

I offered a subtle nod to her because who knew when Agatha’s smooth cordiality might crack.

My sister snorted, eyes on Mr. Moros as she sauntered past. “Yes, Agatha.”

Once out of the room, Agatha rested a hand against the man’s shoulder. “My apologies. She hasn’t been right since her father’s passing. It’s quite hard on a child.”

A lie. Aleysia had always been that way. Father’s death seemed to have pulled very little emotion out of her.

“No harm done. I’m certain your son’s passing has affected all of you, in some way or another.”

“Stepson,” Agatha corrected. “He was Godfrey’s boy.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” With a nod, Mr. Moros turned his attention back on me. “I’d like to invite you to brunch tomorrow, if you’d be so kind as to indulge me.”

A quick glance at Agatha showed her lips tightened, and she gave a curt nod that sent a spiral of alarm across the back of my neck. I opened my mouth to speak, suddenly speechless as it occurred to me why she’d introduced us. Prominent businessmen didn’t spare young women a glance without intention. “I’m afraid I can’t. Bible study.”

“Oh, I’m certain Sacton Crain would be happy to postpone.” The clip of Agatha’s tone told me she wasn’t happy with my response. “Of course, she will join you, Mr. Moros. You honor our family with such an invitation.”

“No, I really—”

“Excellent. I’ll have a carriage sent to retrieve you.” He rubbed his hands together, and I noted rings of various colorful jewels along his fingers.

I’d once heard Agatha call a villager a whore for all the jewelry she wore. I should’ve brought it up just to nettle her, but my throat was still clogged with shock.