Bram Stoker Award-nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen (Blood on Her Tongue) unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull's grin is eternal... The year is 1635. When Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted orphan, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the depths of the Bavarian forest, they form a fragile alliance - born not of trust, but necessity. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. But everything changes when they discover a dying man clutching a strange wooden box. Inside: the gilded skull of a saint. With his final breath, the man shares a secret - reunite the skull with the saint’s body, and a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across a blighted countryside. But something follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic’s power. The saint herself, whispering through their dreams. And as the lines between miracle and curse begin to blur, the women must face a harrowing truth: the magic they seek comes at a cost. At the journey’s end, they’ll face an impossible choice - one that could reshape their world… or bind them to each other forever.
