Chapter One
I have blood on my hands.
I stand in the Forest of the Dead, next to our family tree, a knife dangling from my fingers. My palms are raw and seeping. I’ve been digging into the bark for nearly an hour, and I’ve only managed to carve a shallow furrow. I didn’t think it would be so difficult, but Gran once told me these trees were special—strengthened by the magic of the bones that have hung here for generations. And these branches have seen more power than most.
A bead of sweat slips from the nape of my neck down my spine. I slide to the ground and rest my back against the tree trunk.
Summer has given way to fall, and the trees are aflame with hues of red and orange, as if the whole forest is on fire. It makes me feel as if I’m inside a bone reading, seeing all of my possible futures, dozens of paths stretching before me.
But my mother isn’t on a single one of them.
It’s not just that she’s dead; it’s so much worse than that. She’s also missing.
Latham stole her body, and if I don’t find her bones, she’s lost to me forever. I think of how Gran’s bones were used for my kenning, of how her gran’s bones were used for hers. Our entire family is sealed together this way—the bones of one generation guiding the fate of another. If I can’t get my mother back, whose bones will be used for my own daughter’s kenning? Will they belong to a stranger? Someone who never stroked her hair when she was ill? Who never looked into her eyes after a nightmare to tell her she was safe? Who never loved her?
With a start I realize that even if I do manage to find my mother’s bones, she will never comfort my daughter like Gran comforted me. Never hear the sound of her laugh or clean her sticky fingers. Death is one cruel revelation after another, unfolding like a map of heartache with ever-expanding borders. And now this: My mother will never know my daughter.
Then again, maybe I won’t survive to have a daughter at all.
Grief and rage combine and swell in my throat. My fist clenches tightly around the knife in my hand. I tilt my head toward the sky, and a single crimson leaf drifts onto my shoulder.
Autumn used to be my favorite time of year. I found it poetic—the fierce, bold colors of leaves just before they tremble from their branches and die. As if the last moments of life were the most powerful of all.
But now I prefer the tender, gentle colors of spring.
I shift my body so the leaf floats to the forest floor. The air is heavy with the scent of rot. A few rows away, a burlap sack hangs from a sturdy branch. Inside is the body of Eli Higgins, who took his last breath two weeks ago. And in another tree nearby is Hester Ollif, whose heart stopped beating just yesterday. Both trees are draped in colorful blossoms, the names of the deceased freshly carved into the trunks below other family members who have gone before. At least a dozen trees across the forest are burdened with the bones of the dead.
But our tree is empty. There’s no place to hold my sorrow.
I stand and brush the dust from my skirt. A sudden awareness prickles at the base of my skull and I freeze. Gooseflesh races up my arms. It’s a sensation I’ve experienced multiple times in the last few weeks. It feels like a pair of eyes are focused on my back. Like a breath at my collar. Like someone is watching me.
I spin around, but no one is there. It’s just my imagination. Just the fear of Latham’s last threat: I’ll see you soon, Saskia. You can count on it.
Each night since my mother’s death I’ve had the same nightmare. Just as I drift off, my mind replays each detail of her murder. Latham thrusting a knife through her back. Her eyes going wide with shock before she falls into my arms. Her blood thick on my fingers.
Then the dream shifts to a place I’ve never seen before: a room full of spell books and bones, incense and strange weapons. Latham strides toward me—a Mason-crafted sword in his hand—a look of such dark delight in his eyes that it makes my blood run cold. Each time, I know I’m about to die, but I wake just before the blade falls.
Latham is coming for me. Even when I try to forget, my mind reminds me in my sleep.
And now I’m imagining things that aren’t there while I’m awake, too.
My heart pounds, jackrabbit fast, but I pull in slow, deep breaths until I’m steadier. Then I lift the knife in my fist and begin to scrape at the trunk again, deepening the groove I created earlier. Usually Oskar, the master of the bone house, carves the names of the deceased into the bark when he hangs the burlap bag from one of the branches. But there is no bag to hang, no bones to prepare. I set off for Ivory Hall tomorrow, and I can’t bear to leave an empty space where my mother’s name should be; I may not have her body, but I won’t rob her of the honor of being remembered.
I scrape into the wood until the joints in my fingers scream in pain. Oskar must have better tools for carving than my father’s old knife.
A throat clears behind me. “Saskia?”
I turn to find Bram, his brown eyes soft with concern. A bright spark of surprise goes through me. “You’re back,” I say. Bram came to Midwood after my mother died, but only stayed a short time before returning to Ivory Hall to finish his first-term exams. I’ll be joining the apprentices for the second term, so I didn’t expect to see him until then. “What are you doing here?”
“Norah sent me back to travel with you.” He gives me a wry smile. “I think she’d feel better if every Breaker in Kastelia were by your side.”
Norah is Steward of Ivory Hall. She offered me a placement to train as a Bone Charmer, and wanted me to go to the capital immediately after the funeral, but I needed time to grieve. And time to figure out how I’m going to hide the fact that I’m both more and less qualified than Norah thinks; I already have a Bone Charmer mastery tattoo because my mother was training me in secret, but I lied about being matched as a Charmer. I wasn’t. Not in this reality, at least.
“I think Norah just feels guilty that one of her instructors murdered my family,” I say, dragging the toe of my boot through the pile of leaves at my feet.
A shadow falls over Bram’s expression. “Maybe that’s part of it, but she also cares. You’ll see once you get to know her better.” He rakes his fingers through his hair—a gesture I feel like I’ve seen a hundred times. I’ve known him for years, so it shouldn’t shock me that he’s so familiar. But it’s how familiar that both thrills and unsettles me. Because it’s not our childhood that taught me the planes of his cheekbones, the angle of his jaw, the way he strums his fingers when he’s nervous. It’s the vision of my other path I saw in Gran’s healed bone. A different possibility, one Bram has never seen. To him, I’m just a girl who once judged him unfairly. But to me …
“Anything I can do to help?” he asks, his gaze skipping between the blade in my hand and the tree behind me.
Suddenly an image of his lips on mine rises in my memory. Heat floods my face. I bite the inside of my cheek and hope he doesn’t notice.
He cocks his head to the side and gives me a quizzical look. “Unless you want to be alone? I don’t mean to intrude.”
He’s misread my discomfort. Good.
“You’re not intruding.” I hold out the knife to him. As he takes it, his thumb feathers along the love tattoo on my wrist and I inhale sharply.