Wintermark, Book 1

A Tally of Teeth

Every debt is written. And what is written is owed.

Every debt is written. And what is written is owed.

Tamsin Brandt is twenty-three, human, and the best tracker of her generation, and none of that is why Karvhal Academy lets her through its gates. She is there because her family owes the Tally 1,440 marks, a debt she did not make. The law is simple: graduate, and the Brandt page is wiped clean. Fail, be culled, and the debt doubles, and falls on her sixteen-year-old brother.

Karvhal is the winter school where the seven shifter packs of the Northern Concord make their wardens: three winters of lethal trials, public rankings, and lodges dissolved at every cull. Tam is assigned to the Ninth, the debtors' lodge, under a warden the whole school has already judged. Cassian Marek brought five of his eight cadets home from the Long Night Run three winters ago and confessed to the route that killed the other three. He is the most disgraced man at Karvhal. He is also the only one who never lies to her.

But the page Tam is paying is not the page her father left. Somewhere inside the Tally office, in different ink, a second debt was written after his death, and the Commandant who keeps the book holds her brother's name as collateral. Beyond the passes, forty thousand starving shifters are marching south under a white-haired war-leader, and the war reaches Karvhal at the thaw whether the Tally is ready or not.

A slow-burn academy romantasy of debts, trials, and a bond the law forbids until the held power is surrendered. A Tally of Teeth is Book 1 of Wintermark. The bill for the whole north is coming due.

Explicit · adult readers · Ebook wide at major retailers