Step into a city where monsters feast on human emotions, knights split their souls to make their weapons, and witches always take more than they give. Pain is Dymitr's calling. To slay the monsters he's been raised to kill, he had to split his soul in half to make a sword from his own spine. Every time he draws it, he gets blood on his hands. Pain is Ala's inheritance. When her mother died, a family curse to witness horrors committed by the Holy Order was passed onto her. The curse will claim her life, as it did her mother's, unless she can find a cure. One fateful night in Chicago, Dymitr comes to Ala with a her help in finding the legendary witch Baba Jaga in exchange for an enchanted flower that just might cure her. Desperate, and unaware of what Dymitr really is, Ala agrees. But they only have one day before the flower dies, and Ala's hopes of breaking the curse along with it.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth pulls from Slavic folklore to explore family, duty, and what it means to be a monster in this sequel to the USA Today bestselling novella When Among Crows A funeral. A heist. A mission born of desperation. When someone in Dymitr’s family dies, he’s called back home for the Empty Night, a funeral rite intended to keep evil at bay. The secret Dymitr is keeping from them makes returning home downright dangerous, but if he wants to get his hands on a book of curses that might appease Baba Jaga’s blood lust, he has no choice. And when that same funeral brings ferocious creature-of-legend Niko to town for his own bloody purposes, Dymitr’s charade becomes impossible to maintain. Family gatherings can be brutal. Dymitr’s might just be fatal.