"There is no doubt in my mind that Kerstin Hall is one of the great imaginative minds writing fantasy today."—Isabel Cañas, USA Today Bestselling author of Vampires of El Norte

"Read this book. Let its deliciously dark world envelop you.... You'll thank me later."—Veronica Roth, New York Times bestselling author of Divergent and Chosen Ones

Sabriel meets Witch King in Kerstin Hall's beguiling new Nebula Award finalist novel. Reactor Reviewer's Choice Best Book of 2024, and a New York Public Library Best-Of Pick

We choose our own gods here.

Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.

Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they must journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors, and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.

And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.