Azazel Wickerman inherited exactly two things from her house's broken name: a creaking manor, and the Seal on her arm. One takes up space. The other just takes.

At nineteen, the last daughter of the Wickerman line is famous for precisely nothing — except falling down. So when her Crownguard cell is ordered into the Bleached Forest to find the source of a spreading corruption, the mission should be simple: get in, mark the site, come home.

But the forest has gone the color of bone, the outposts have stopped answering — and with every step Azazel takes toward the dead heart of it, the mark that has spent nineteen years taking from her begins, for the first time, to want…