I knew right away that Sophia hadn’t dropped it while climbing trees or playing among the tombstones. I had to press my wrist against it to be sure, because my scarred hands weren’t good at telling temperature. When I crouched down and touched it, the metal still felt warm. Every novice and sister carried one, a thurible on a chain to defend ourselves against the Dead, and I recognized this censer by its shape and its tracery of black tarnish as belonging to Sophia, one of the youngest novices, brought to the convent only last winter. If I hadn’t come to the convent’s cemetery to be alone, I wouldn’t have noticed the silver gleam of the censer lying abandoned at the base of a tombstone. With all knowledge of vespertines lost to time, Artemisia turns to the last remaining expert for help: the revenant itself.Īs she unravels a sinister mystery of saints, secrets, and dark magic, Artemisia discovers that facing this hidden evil might require her to betray everything she believes-if the revenant doesn’t betray her first. It is a revenant, a malevolent being whose extraordinary power almost consumes her-but death has come, and only a vespertine, a priestess trained to wield a high relic, has any chance of stopping it. When her convent is attacked by possessed soldiers, Artemisia defends it by awakening an ancient spirit bound to a saint’s relic.

She would rather deal with the dead than the living, who whisper about her scarred hands and troubled past. From the New York Times bestselling author of Sorcery of Thorns and An Enchantment of Ravens comes a thrilling, “dark coming-of-age adventure” ( Culturess) about a teen girl with mythic abilities who must defend her world against restless spirits of the dead.Īrtemisia is training to be a Gray Sister, a nun who cleanses the bodies of the deceased so that their souls can pass on otherwise, they will rise as ravenous, hungry spirits.

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson