The Purple Blight: Book 1

Wren Fischer knows cold.

She knows the salt wind off the docks of Sennewick, the weight of a wool coat against winter, and the clean certainty of ice answering her hands. What she does not know, when she is called away to a witch school at eighteen, is Ana Yarrow.

A herb-grower's daughter with patient hands, living magic, and a laugh that fills a room. For the first time, Wren is somewhere she does not want to leave.

Then something corrupted bites Ana.

There is no cure for what begins spreading beneath her skin. There is only a silver ring set with a milky-blue stone, and Wren's ice poured into it every morning and every night to hold the rot back.

For a while, the ring buys them hours.

Then it buys fewer.

With nowhere else to turn, they set out east for Selenmar and the possibility of an answer-past sickened animals, ruined fields, and a darkness that was never only Ana's.

Every night the work gets harder.

Every morning the margin gets thinner.