No—she could not give up. Lena opened her eyes and dragged her exhausted body upright once more, determined to continue, but now she was surrounded, not by trees but by a mass of people, each one of them turning toward her—each one of them familiar. These were the dead of Duke’s Forest, the dead the Pestilence had taken, the dead she had helped to undress, wash, and embalm, replacing their eyes with the painted stones and glittering gems that now bore into her.

She was a convicted mage and an outcast, and the Ancestors were angry.

She stumbled back against a tree, touched her forehead, lips, and chest in a silent prayer, her hand shaking. “Please … ,” she managed, but the Ancestors’ hearts were hollowed out. The world turned black.

Lena had been sixteen the first time it had happened, a year before the Justice had condemned her to die. She’d been helping Vigo embalm an old guardsman, dead of the Pestilence, in one of the special preparatory chambers beneath the castle’s gardens. Thick glass bricks had been set in the ceiling, allowing weak light—and the occasional flash of the storm cloud’s blue-green lightning—to filter down on their delicate work.

She had pulled up the guardsman’s left eyelid to sew it in place with the curved needle and special white thread. Eyes were something of a specialty of Lena’s, with her slender, accurate fingers—and although she had once hated the feel of the cold gems slotting into empty sockets, in time she had come to find it satisfying.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” Master Vigo had said, in the manner of one who had asked the question a hundred times. He was in the process of removing and potting the organs, a special stoneware jar for each one. The smell of spoiling flesh filled the air, but Lena had grown used to it long ago. “You ought to. You have barely a year until you come of age.” He deftly pulled the liver through the small incision he had cut in the body’s side and slipped it into the waiting vessel, already packed with the sharp-smelling preservative oils and herbs.

“I haven’t thought about it,” Lena lied, trying to sound dismissive. “A year is a long time.” In fact, she’d been thinking about it a lot recently. She’d never chosen this life. The birthmark on her face had chosen it for her—or rather, her parents had, whoever they were, when they decided to abandon her to the fate of a cryptling rather than raise a Marked child.

“It’s not, and you’re a fool to pretend you can put it off for much longer.”