Read the first chapter of Tonight, I Burn

Dive into the first chapter of this addictive, romantic YA fantasy debut from Katharine J Adams. Out now! 

      A witch will burn today.
      This time it isn’t me.
      This time I’m lighting the match.
      A coven of witches should have a more efficient way to start a fire; with magic at our fingertips, sparks should fly with a wave of our hands. Regrettably, we don’t. Our magic is bound entirely to Death, and the ember witches don’t like to share. Not with us.
      The first strike of the match head against the gritted strip on the box fails. Sparks fly and wink out as they fall. The second strike catches and gutters down to a tiny orb of flame before flaring, pale wood curling black as fire consumes the matchstick.
      My sister catches my eye. She’s the one who should be trembling; she’s the one about to be burnt alive on the Warden’s orders. But Mila’s been walking in Death for years. She’s the oldest of the three of us, the Thorn Queen’s heir, and she milks it for all it’s worth. Mila gives me a superior smile, the kind of smile she’d accompany with a flounce of her hair if her hands weren’t manacled to the iron stake behind her. “Penny, you’re going to burn yourself if you’re not careful.”
      The flame has eaten so much of the matchstick, I already am.
      A low chuckle ripples around the coven. Twelve of us laugh.
      I don’t. It isn’t funny. I’m about to watch my sister die—temporarily, but it’s still going to hurt. All of us. A lot.
      I drop the match, right into a little pile of straw set at the base of the pyre. It catches without hesitation, and that is courtesy of the Embers. An insult of the Warden’s law the Ember Coven resent more than we resent burning at all. I wish there was an easier way—a way that didn’t feel so needlessly brutal—but leaving a body behind rather complicates the whole thing. I’m not entirely sure it’s even possible. Books state that burning is the single viable method of crossing the veil if we want to return, but the spell books we’re allowed to access are all pre-approved by the Warden or his council of sadistic old men. At best, they’re watered down versions of the truth, and everything in Halstett is a lie.
      Mila’s smile wavers, falters a little. Reforms.
      Pain is coming. She knows it. She’s done this before. But tonight is my first time lighting the pyre, and my oldest sister is the first witch I burn.
      Smoke wisps around the straw, wraithlike fingers rising to clutch at Mila’s ankles.
      Her bare toes press into the platform in a tiny movement of unease. We all feel it, linked as we are. Ella slips her hand in mine, a sisterly gesture, a squeeze of solidarity. “Breathe, Pen,” she murmurs. “It’s going to be fine.”
      Then, the chanting starts, ancient words that open the veil between Life and the cold plains of Death. The low hum of magic builds in my ears, and I join my voice to theirs—words I learnt as a child, words I wished I’d never have to say. Yet I’ve repeated them each night since we were brought to Halstett thirteen years ago.
      I didn’t want to be a death-walker. But I am. And as Grandmother says, we can’t fight the truth of who we are, only choose what we do with it. Not that we have a lot of choice. Imprisoned within the Colligerate walls, those with our particular power have two paths: serve the Faceless Warden as a death-walker or become one of his soulless Gilded army. There’s no in-between.
      Grandmother reaches for my hand, her eyes flashing with a glint of the Thorn Queen I haven’t seen since the Gilded tore us from our village. She was respected once—an ageless beauty, leader of the Thorn Coven, who fearlessly guarded Death from those who sought to defy it. Now, her gnarled fingers ensnare mine and the circle around the pyre closes. Heat prickles at the soles of my feet, though the flagstones beneath them are cold as winter ice. The scent of singed cotton clogs my nose and throat, but I keep whispering the words to open the path into Death. Mila begins to burn, her feet blistering, smoke rising from charring skin, and searing heat claws at my own.
      Still, we whisper; still, we chant.
      I watch my sister die and it’s like watching myself. With our colouring so similar and only a few years between us, Mila and Ella and I used to be mistaken for each other until they began to walk and the light faded a little in their eyes each time. Auburn hair flickers with fire, and I lose the line where Mila ends and the flames begin. Her silver eyes squeeze shut. Her fingers dig into the post she’s bound to.
      As my sister burns, we burn with her. We’re stronger together. Every moment is shared, divided by thirteen. I wonder how bad this would be alone, without a coven to ease our passing.
      Mila doesn’t scream. No one does. Death for us must be quiet and emotionless. Screaming wakes the dead; fear summons fog-wraiths hungry for destruction.
      Pain lets us pass.
      With a soft sigh, Mila is gone.
      My sister is dead, and I killed her. But it’s a routine patrol, a walk along the borders between Life and Death. She won’t go deep. She’ll be back by morning. Then, tomorrow night, we’ll do it all over again. It’s a vicious life, a brutal one, slowly stealing a part of our soul each time we walk. Still, it’s better than being Gilded. Anything is better than that.
      In two days, it is my twenty-first birthday, and I will be ordered to burn for the very first time. And I’m terrified.
      As the ritual demands, I’m the last to leave. The witch who strikes the match stays behind to undo the empty manacles and ensure the veil closed behind her sister. Not having come of age, I don’t sense the veil yet, so Ella takes on that role tonight. A light frown creases her brow as she nods, confirming Mila has passed without incident, and I gingerly release the manacles. They clatter to the stake accusingly, and I wish I’d not dropped them. Ella’s still frowning while I place the key neatly on the low wooden workbench in the corner and wipe the ash coating my fingertips against my shift skirts.
      The chamber allocated to our burning is buried beneath the Colligerate wing we are told is our home. A complicated system of vents cycle air to outside, ensuring our regular demise does not disturb the Warden’s evening stroll. Ella twists the black metal knob on the wall, the word Filtration stamped in its centre, and a low hiss to the airflow I’ve never noticed before quietens.
      When she turns back, there’s a curve to one side of her lips that doesn’t suit her. She wrinkles her nose, freckles twitching. “You’ve got Mila’s ash on your ankle.”
      I snatch a checked cloth from the bench and scrub. Burning is horrible, having my family’s remains stuck under my nails is its own particular kind of awful, but the bath afterwards is some consolation—a small piece of privacy and quiet. I can slide under the water, close my eyes, and imagine I am home. I wonder if that will fade, once I walk. When I step into Death for the first time, which fragment of my soul will I leave behind?
Ella pulls the cloth from my hand and there’s an odd glint in her eye that I don’t like at all. “Pen, I need a favour.”
      “What kind of favour?”
      She rubs her elbow, pressing a thumb into the crook of it, thinking her way around a problem like she used to when Mother set us potion tests—if she had a pen, she’d be chewing the end of it. Instead she chews her bottom lip. Her frown flits back, then clears to calculated satisfaction that shines in her eyes. “I need to go to the library.”
      My heart sinks as my hope of a bath floats away. “Why?”
      “I forgot something.” Ella screws up the cloth as she shoves it on the side and pushes me out the door in a sisterly gesture I don’t quite trust. Ella never forgets anything.
      “We can’t get in to the library.”
      “We can.” It’s a non-answer, and she knows it. I can tell by the ways she hurries a bit faster up the stairs and down the passageway, past the doors to the baths and the turning to our rooms.
      “What’s so important it can’t wait until tomorrow.”
      “A book.”
      “Stop lying!”
      “Hush!” She halts so suddenly, I trip and barrel into her back. “I’m not lying.”
      She most definitely is. “Just being economical with the truth?”
      We’re by the main entrance to the Thorn Coven’s wing, an arched door made of grey, polished wood. Beyond it lies the Colligerate hallways. Gold studs mark a pattern of diamonds that reflect flickering lamplight, and there’s a keyhole to which our coven has never seen a key. Ella’s silver eyes sparkle, bright with challenge, and she’s the sister she was before she first walked, when we used to sneak out all the time. I have a scar on my wrist from our last childish adventure. “Scared, Pen?”
      “No!” My answer is reflexive, not a well thought out response. Going to the library after the curfew bell rings is an terrible idea.
      “So you’re in?” Ella’s tone, the way she raises an eyebrow daring me to back out, makes it feel bigger than a trip to the library. But really, anything involving the library is vaster than those of us who work there acknowledge. For a start, it’s the only place in the whole Colligerate that the Warden and his Gilded do not step foot.
      I shrug—refusing to acknowledge it either, even with Ella. “Of course I’m in. Who knows what trouble you’ll get into on your own.”
      Ella grins, flashing white teeth and dimpling her cheeks. “Stay close. Once the curfew warning rings, we have precisely ten minutes before the next round of the guard.”
      I’d ask how she knows, where she got this particular information, and who she’s been sneaking out with, but before I can, she slips out the door, leaving me no choice but to go after her.
      The curfew warning sounds as the door clicks shut behind me. And we have half an hour before curfew traps us. The hallway lamps dim in response to the warning, ember magic burning low in glass-scalloped sconces set high up the walls. Night hangs outside the windows, creeping over the sills as the bell reverberates through stone flagstones and bounces a warning around ceilings the lamplight can’t reach. When the next bell rings, anyone in a corridor without permission will be at the mercy of the Gilded, and the Gilded and mercy don’t mix.
      The buildings that make up the Colligerate compound are perched high on the peak of a hill right in the centre of Halstett City’s fortified granite walls. A second wall circles the foot of the hill, and a third rings the Colligerate itself. I think it was a sanctuary once, a place of knowledge and learning before the Warden criminalised the truth and bent history to flatter his image. The library tower is in the very middle, seven corridors spread out from it like the spokes of a spiderweb. Each coven has its own spindle, five wings with a tower at the end.
      The sixth corridor is wider, more extravagant, a gold-carpeted path to the Warden’s luxurious palace. It’s heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, that corridor. The three of us sisters, Mila and Ella and me, used to hide behind the tapestries when our fingers turned numb with cold until Aunt Shara caught us giggling and out of bounds. She taught us a lesson that day, one we didn’t forget in a hurry: precisely what the Gilded’s punishment would be if we were found out. She took us to watch the next trials. I still remember the drip of blood to the courtyard flagstones, the way it paused a little before it went down the drain, the shock in the woman’s eyes when she picked her finger up off the ground.
      Yet, here we are again, out of bounds right before curfew begins. Holy Dark Mother, Ella and I should know better than this by now.
      Ella slows and holds out a hand behind her, twitching a finger to send me closer into the wall. We’re at a circular corridor that joins the other spokes of the Colligerate, and if we’re caught anywhere, it’s most likely to be here, where we’re closest to the black marble hallway to the Gilded Barracks and the military training centre. And the Amphitheatre with its pit of eternal fires.
      Silence falls, amplifying the quiet thud of my own heart in my ears, the movement of cotton against my ribs as I inhale, the soft wheeze we all get after a burning as I breathe out. A wheeze that the bath salts normally soothe away. I scowl at Ella’s back. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be in that bath right now.
      Boots sound in the distance, a male laugh and a deep-voiced reply. Ella squeezes my hand once. A signal to wait, stay still—don’t breathe. I imagine the palace guard are spiders creeping along spidersilk, hunting their prey. The boots turn a corner and fade into the quiet of the night, and we run the rest of the way to the library. Huddled close in the shelter of the library entrance, the smell of smoke clings to us. If the Gilded scent us on the dry Colligerate air their attention will swivel in our direction, and once they begin a hunt, their quarry never escapes.
      Ella has had some bad ideas over the years, but this is one of the worst. I hiss in her ear, “What now, genius?”
      “We go in.” Ella pulls a ribbon out of her pocket, black velvet tied with a bow to a key the length of my pinky finger.
      My eyes widen. “Where did you get—”
      “Don’t ask, and I won’t lie.” She’s so sure of herself, so determined.
      And it’s infuriating. I hate getting half a story, and she knows it. “You’ve got a nerve!”
      Her tone softens. “I’ll tell you a secret?”
      Ella has a secret? I can’t stop the frown, but I do try and hide it with half a smile. “It’d better be worth it.”
      “It is.”
      Reluctantly, I nod, and she unlocks the door.
      We step together into the hushed library quiet. Ella inhales softly through her nose, and I close my eyes, savouring the smell of books. Here we are safe, free of the Gilded and the Warden’s demands. For a while, anyway. Ella slips a hand into mine and takes a lantern from the hook by the door.
      The library belongs to us all. Here, magic cooperates even if the witches do not. Ore magic is woven into the stones of the library tower, shimmering in the moonlight and making the impossible spiral of stairs and landings a magnificent reality. Ember magic glows softly in the dormant lamps that circle each landing. Storm magic shines in the glass windows, filtering the light of the moon, and tide spells hum quietly in the air vents, dehumidifying the air to preserve the ancient tomes. Only thorn magic is missing. Not even the library welcomes Death.
      With a click of her fingers, Ella activates the spell in her lantern, and light pools around us, illuminating the librarian’s desk of warm-polished cherry wood, an island in a sea of black and white checked marble floor. The stairs alternate black and white as they curve up the circular library tower. Nine floors of books rise into the darkness above. We listen and pray we are not listened to. When we hear nothing, Ella gives me a little nod, and quietly we climb the stairs to the first floor where spell primers live and small witches cluster when their lessons are done. We tread carefully, light footsteps barely making a sound on the semi-circle landing that takes us to the next flight of stairs.
      On the second floor, the shelves are lined with fairy tales, so many it might hold all the fairy stories ever written in all the world. Each spine is a dark rainbow shade and it’s the closest we get to full colour. I wonder if they know, the Warden and his council, that the library defies their colour restrictions. Maroon and bottle green and midnight blue leather all embossed in silver and gold take on a brightness they never had before the laws came into force. If the leather bindings are precious, the pictures inside are priceless. I used to wish I lived in a fairy story. Now I wish I had a little more time before I walk in Death and lose fairy stories for good. Mila walked for a year before she lost all joy in painting. One day she put down her brush and never picked it back up. Ella took a little longer but she never reads for fun anymore, and I can’t face the reality of slowly losing my hiding place in the pages of a book. Not yet.
      As we get close to the stairs, we tiptoe, Ella and I, holding tight to each other’s hands. The Overseer of Literary Pursuits has her rose-embellished office on this floor; if she’s working late and catches us, justifying our night-time wanderings to her will be almost as painful as trying to talk our way out of it with Grandmother.
      Ella speeds up on the Third, pulling me faster, and I don’t know why. This is the dullest floor; I spent most of today on my knees at the foot of these bookcases, reorganising the military history of the High Warden’s rule, inaccurately documented in untruthful detail. Each book is a dreary shade of brown, the titles stamped in black ink, and no one ever comes here except the occasional palace guard and librarians on cleaning duty. She’s jumpy, glancing down each aisle between the shelves, and I don’t think she breathes fully until we reach the Fourth where the spell books permitted to the covens’ general use stand in neatly dusted lines. Each tome is missing chapters, and those pages that survived the Warden’s censorship have lines crossed out in heavy black ink.
      Censors’ offices stand along the back wall, connected directly to the furnace by a chute topped with a steel lid. Dull eyed men work there in the daylight hours, taking words from books and throwing them out. I hate this floor, filled with what could have been and what we should have known. The rough-ripped edges of torn-away pages are a wound in our magic that’s unlikely to heal.
      The air heavies as we reach the fifth floor. The dark becomes darker, denser. Shadows sharpen and desks take on nefarious angles. Bookcases shiver as if they hold more than neat lines of books. Mythology, legend, and spell craft live side by side on the Fifth, there are no labels on the shelves, no filing system to organise them, the books are left where they fit best; a decorative edition of Ballads of the Wayvern Spine sits beside Advanced Techniques in Pyromancy and an old broken-spined copy of The Epidemiology of Magic leans drunkenly against a shiny hardback of Notable Storms of the Western Seaboard which appears unread.
      I try to slip my hand from Ella’s. I don’t want to go any higher, I’m not allowed, but she tugs me towards the stairs. I’ve never been above the Fifth—even witches on regular library duty are rarely required to. Only those more senior than me are permitted to access.
      I love the library—stories bound in paper and ink and leather covers are more friendly than reality. Last time I was caught in an alcove I wasn’t supposed to be in with a book I wasn’t permitted to read, I was banned for an entire cycle of the moon, and it was quite possibly the most effective punishment I’ve ever received. Every day hurt. But more than that, I do not want to disturb what resides in the upper floors. Ella tells me it’s nothing, but we all know something is there: something made of magic and spell craft, or caged by it.
      Fear trails a chilled finger down my neck, and I can’t take another step. “Ella, stop. Please. Whatever game you’re playing, this is too far.”
      She’s pale, even in the warmth of the lantern. “You want that secret?”
      “Not this much!”
      Ella huffs a sigh, lets go of my hand, and leans back against the bannisters. Moonlight outlines her hair silver and reflects off green gilt on book bindings, looking for all the world like tiny eyes watching us from the shadows. “This is big, Pen.”
      I lean beside her so the banister presses against my spine. “Define big.”
      “I’ve…” She falters.
      I nudge her with my elbow. “I’m not going up another step unless you tell me why.”
      “I just need you to hold the light.”
      “Why?” Holy Dark Mother, she can be infuriating.
      Ella laughs nervously as she turns towards the stairs to the Sixth. “I’ve met someone.”
      She swallows. Grins. And runs.
      I can’t go up there! But I’m not letting Ella go alone either. And she’s got the light! “Damn it, Ella!” I hiss a whisper, brace myself, and skip two steps in my hurry to catch up, trying to ignore the rules I’m breaking. More and more the higher we go. “Ella, wait! Who did you meet?”
      We run around the sixth floor landing. None of the books seem to have titles on their spines here, and I have no idea what books this level holds; there’s no labels anywhere, no writing, just a curious flicker of light that keeps changing colour from green to orange, purple to pink, and back to green. And I have no desire to investigate, I don’t want to be here at all.
      Ella finally stops on the Seventh. No one goes to the Eighth. Ever. Above that is the Ninth, and whatever hides there is enough to keep the Warden away. To stop the Gilded from entering. I hear it sometimes, a soft murmur of my name that scuffs down the elevator shaft when I’m loading a book trolley at the bottom. Ella says I’m imagining it, but I’m not so sure.
      The Seventh is filled with dusty spell books, padlocked shut and chained to the shelf. Dust is caught along the panelling and it smells different here. Drier. Less book and more magic. Maybe this is where the spell books that were saved from the Warden’s magic purge are hidden. I’ve heard rumours that some survived, but I’m not entirely sure I like the idea of being so close to forgotten magic, so I squash the thought and focus on Ella who’s staring at the number seven embossed in gold upon the ebony-panelled wall.
      A small spider rests on a little web it’s woven in the number, its eyes sparkling green in the odd light. It’s brighter here—or darker further up. I can’t quite tell. But the light or lack of it, isn’t important. What is important is whatever the heck is Ella playing at.
      “Stay here,” she says in a voice like rice paper, all crispy and dry like the air.
      “You can’t be serious?”
      Ella tries to hand me the lantern, but I’m not taking it. If I take it, she’s going higher, and she can’t. She shakes it in frustration, dancing shadows down the spines of gilded books with elaborately scripted, illegible titles. “Hold the light. I won’t be long.”
      “You are not going up there! The last person—”
      “Didn’t come back?” she finishes. “Lies, Pen.”
      “They did come back?”
      “Penny, please.” Ella doesn’t want to be here any more than I do—and I really do not want to be here.
      “Why?!”
      Ella picks at a freckle on the inside of her forearm absently, her attention entirely on the next flight of stairs and the darkness at the top of them. “You don’t want to know.”
      “If this is some dare…” That’s not it, and I know it, but I leave the accusation hanging anyway. I’m stalling—I need to stop her going higher. “We’re too old for this nonsense!”
      “Fine!” Ella unfolds her arms and squares her shoulders, and it makes her look smaller. “I shouldn’t have involved you in this in the first place.”
      “Involved me in what? Tell me, and I’ll hold your hand all the way to the Ninth!” My voice raises.
       The elevator clangs. Once. We both freeze, listening to its echo. The silence afterwards.
       In the apex of the library, the darkness stutters with a green blinking glow. A faulty elevator light? They do that sometimes. The magic is old, the spell work complex, and coordinating a repair team is complicated by the covens’ refusal to cooperate.
      In the book-muffled silence, Ella leans close to whisper: “A gear settling?”
      “Must be.” I don’t sound convincing.
      She shoves the lantern at me, and I shake my head even as I take it. I shouldn’t take it. Everything in me is screaming to grab my sister’s hand and run, down the stairs, out the library, back to the relative safety of the Thorn Wing. I should tell her that wasn’t a gear settling! Instead, I mutter, “If you’re not back by the next bell, I’m coming after you.”
      Ella grimaces, inhales slowly, and runs up the stairs before I can change my mind.
      Her shift blends into the dark as she reaches the next floor. Even when I lift the lantern higher and tap it twice to make it brighten, I can’t see her. I can’t hear her either. No footfall on a stair, no thud or shuffle. Nothing. It’s as if she vanished into thin air. I count my breaths to keep myself steady. The next bell will ring soon—sounding curfew this time, not a warning. Then, I’ll go after her.
      Green light sparkles on the next landing, my lantern bouncing off a spell book or a green glass inkwell. Whatever it is, it’s unsettling. I blink hard and dim the lantern with two taps. My hand shakes, and the lantern snuffs out, plunging the library into a darkness so solid it presses on my nerves.
      Above me, glass smashes. The lantern slips from my hand.
      Ella gasps.
      My heart pounds so hard I feel sick.
      I drop to a crouch, feeling for the lantern. I need to get to Ella. I can’t find the stairs without a light! I need to stop panicking. I can’t help Ella if I’m not thinking straight.
      I squeeze my eyes tight shut. Inhale once. Smell a rose, Mother says when the walls of panic start closing in. Blow it away. I exhale and click my fingers. The lantern blinks on, warm light illuminating a crack in the glass and Ella.
      She’s at the bottom of the stairs, staring straight at me. Through me. Her eyes are wide and glazed, her lips slightly parted. Silently, she holds out a hand, and I take it and tug her away, too scared to speak in case it’s not Ella that answers. I’ve read too many stories with monsters disguised as friends, watched too many gildings steal part of my family.
      All the way to the ground floor, Ella is silent. Not one word as I hang the lantern on the hook and pull her out the door. She locks it, pockets the key, and hand in hand we tiptoe from shadow to shadow, darting into an alcove when we hear voices coming from the corridor to the barracks. Her fingers are cold, so cold, but they’re beginning to tremble—and any sign of life is a relief.
      We don’t stop until we reach our rooms, and I whisper: “You’re not hurt?”
      Ella’s expression doesn’t change, her mouth is a thin line, and her freckles don’t dance when shakes her head, but her fingers are trembling.
      “How far did you go?”
      She doesn’t answer, just stares at me, her eyes slowly regaining their focus, but slightly off in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.
      Worry nibbles at my thoughts, and I don’t want to leave her alone quite yet. “Tomorrow, Isabella Albright, you are telling me everything!”
The use of her full name, the one Grandmother uses when she’s got a bone to pick, startles her, and finally, finally, Ella reacts. A frown furrows her brow. Her freckles don’t quite dance, but they do a little skip. “I can’t.” Her voice is all scratchy and raw. “I really can’t, Pen. This is bigger than me. Or you. Or all of us.”
      I worked that out around the time the lights went out. I nudge her gently on the arm. “You promised me a secret, and so far, all I got is that you’re secretly seeing someone.
      Tomorrow, you tell me who they are, where you met them, and what the heck you’re going to do when Grandmother finds out?”
      “Deal,” Ella replies. She pauses, hesitates, and says, “I’m sorry, Pen. Tonight was a mistake.”
      “Els, what’s going on?”
      “Nothing,” she says quietly. “Everything is fine. It will be fine. It has to be.”
      Quietly, she closes the door, leaving me confused in the hall. Before tonight, I was scared of my first walk in Death, now I’m afraid of so much more: the last thorn witch who attempted to reach the Ninth got inexplicably tangled in Death the next night. And Ella walks tomorrow.
      Maybe I can convince her not to burn, maybe she could feign sickness or convince one of our cousins to switch. But that would direct Grandmother’s attention squarely in her direction, and if Ella’s met someone, she’ll lose them if they’re found out. She won’t risk it.
      Death-walkers like us are forbidden love. We might be tempted to intervene in Death’s plans if our lovers were to die. And necromancy is severely frowned-upon. Instead, a death’s head hawkmoth is tattooed on our shoulders, and we are sworn to protect the veil between Life and Death. We’re told it’s a badge of honour. I called bullshit on that one when I was fourteen and got a clip ‘round the ear for my opinions from Grandmother.
      This place is a prison, but to suggest as much is a punishable offence. We’re honoured guests. We cannot leave. The rest of the coven accept it. I’m not sure I do. I dream of more; of green fields and blue skies, picnics in the sunshine and stolen moments in a twilight-gloamed forest sparkling with fireflies. Friendship, laughter, and love. I long for home: our village on the edge of the woods and the banks of a river with the stream winding through the centre. But our village is cinder and ash, our forest a waste land, and our coven is the Warden’s private defence against Death.
      And that is the truth of why we’re here—why we weren’t gilded with the other death-walking witch covens when they rounded us up and brought us in. Everyone has a lifeline, an invisible cord stretching from our chests, winding through our lives and leading beyond Death’s final Horizon. Except the Warden. His is bound to the veil, his life fuels it, and if he dies the veil will solidify into a wall no soul can pass. The living will be unable to die. Their souls will vacate their bodies and solidify into fog-wraiths and the dead will devour life.
      Responsibility for the veil should be his, the fog-wraiths in Death are his failure, but the Warden is wounded, his health faltering. So, we pay for his mistakes every night with our burning.
      My Grandmother’s magic keeps him alive. The Thorn coven are his shield.
      The High Warden is our gift to the people of Halstett: an immortal tyrant who cannot die.

Continue Penny's story in Tonight, I Burn, available HERE.