A Consuming Fire

Chapter One: Weatherell ONE Weatherell
Once upon a time, when Anya Astraea and her sister, Ilva, were small, they made a habit of walking out to Weatherell's final clearing together. The clearing marked the edge of the village's woodland-beyond it there was only the uninhabited New Forest, with its birdsong and bluebells and wandering piebald ponies, and past that, the forbidden expanse of Albion, which had been the Roman province of Britain before the last of the centurions left, some five centuries ago. While few raised in the village of Weatherell ever saw what lay outside the wood, none born and bred in Albion ever left the great island's shores.

In Weatherell's final clearing, at the edge of everything Anya knew, there stood a beech tree with golden leaves. Old charms crowded its branches, hanging so heavy they might have been a strange and jangling crop of fruit. They'd been made by the people of Weatherell, from glass and chestnut hulls and old coins dug up from the forest earth, which bore the faces of long-forgotten lordlings and Caesars. But the most vital of Weatherell's charms-the ones wrought for protection, not for beauty-were strung with bits of sun-bleached bone. Anya and Ilva would lie on their backs and look up at the spinning charms and try to guess which of the Weatherell girls each bone had come from.

Was it Gabrielle, who'd given her face to the god of the mountain, returning home indelibly marked by a mask of deep scars?

Was it Leya, who'd given her right leg at the knee, and joked until her death that at least she had another?

Was it Florien, who'd given her memory, and known not a soul when she'd come back to the village?

Was it Moriah, who'd given her thumbs and been considered lucky, because the god might certainly have required more?

On and on they'd guess, naming girls who'd gone out from Weatherell to serve as living sacrifices to the god of the mountain. It was Ilva's game, really. She found that naming the

Laura E. Weymouth is the author of several novels, including the critically acclaimed The Light Between Worlds, A Treason of Thorns, A Rush of Wings, and A Consuming Fire. Born and raised in the Niagara region of Ontario, Laura now lives at the edge of the woods in western New York with her husband, two wild-hearted daughters, and an ever-expanding menagerie of animal friends. Learn more at LauraEWeymouth.com.

"Achingly lovely and luminous, Weymouth weaves a tale of vengeance and mercy that left me completely enthralled. I'll be thinking about the Weatherell girls for a very long time to come." Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows