Category: BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL by V. E. SCHWAB Free Novel

Alice spills into the darkened Yard. She was right, the fresh air does feel mercifully good. The heaviness is gone, the wall of low clouds replaced by open night. She walks, her body coming unstuck a little, stride by stride, as she heads across the lamp-lit quad. The sky overhead is more indigo than black,

The tapestries, the chairs, the rugs. María paces the house, reciting to herself the many changes she will make, but soon grows bored. She goes upstairs and lets herself into her husband’s rooms, surprised to find them a cluttered version of her own. A suit of armor poses on a wooden model, the metal polished

María’s spirits soar at the sight of her new home. The Olivares estate may not be a whole city, like Burgos, but it is still a magnificent domain. A village sits in the crook of the slope, and smaller houses dot the surrounding hills like sheep, but the casona rises above them, a massive building

I Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Spain 1521 The widow arrives on a Wednesday. María remembers, because Wednesdays are for bathing, and her hair takes an age to dry after it’s been washed and combed. She remembers, because it is warm for the end of April, and she is sitting in a patch of sun