Mira Solten has spent twelve years following a thread no one else can hear. The thread is the signal of her mother's soul, bound to the Bone Rites after the Auditors took her body before sunrise. In the Gilded Compact, the dead do not simply rest. They are called back to serve the living, their souls forced into endless labor while the ruling class grows immortal on borrowed breath.
Mira is a Resonant, one of the rare few who can feel the bone-called. Her mother's signal has led her from the salt flats to the capital's dark Underlayer, and now it pulls her toward the forbidden Catacombs. There, the first soul ever resurrected waits in silence, holding the secret of an ancient bargain. A being that feeds on death has been consuming the energy of the Rites for three centuries. If the system ever collapses, four million souls will be taken in a single moment.
The only way to stop the mass collection is for a Resonant to offer her proximal bond, the thread that connects her to her mother. To save millions, Mira must give up the only thing that has kept her alive.
Enter Crown Auditor Aleksander Caine. Sent to capture the unlicensed Resonant, he expects a dangerous criminal. Instead, he finds a girl who looks at him like she is ready to run, and a truth that shatters everything he believes. His own resurrection at age twelve was paid for with a Salt-class substitute. His father, the most powerful Rite Keeper in the empire, has been manipulating Resonants for decades. And the bond that Mira carries is exactly what his father has been hunting.
Together, Mira and Aleksander descend into the Catacombs, facing the being's hunger, the Hollow Court's schemes, and the impossible choice between love and legacy. But when the bond is severed and the silence remains, Mira discovers that sacrifice is not the end ? it is a beginning.
A Court of Borrowed Bones is a darkly romantic YA fantasy for readers who love forbidden love, morally complex heroes, and the courage to let go.
