Cursed Whispers

A curse that closes one night at a time. A cure that needs forty names the world was made to forget.

The Lantern Council has finally lifted the ban on a forbidden word, and on Sunday, in front of four thousand people at the Feast of Lamps, Clara Ashworth is supposed to light the Heart, the great lamp beneath the Council hall.

There is only one problem. Since the night a masked stranger touched her wrist, a thin grey thread has been closing around her, one loop each night. It has taken her spark. It has taken her gift for hearing the truth. When the seventh loop closes, it will take everything she is.

Every night she hears it whisper. And underneath the whispers, someone is trying to say a name.

With a blind thread-mistress in Spitalfields, a loyal young Warden, a charm-wright thief, an old archivist, a best friend who refuses to leave her side, and an eleven-year-old boy who is calmer than she is, Clara has days to learn what the thread is really made of: forty people who were struck from every record, and are still asking to be remembered. To break the curse, their names must be said aloud in front of the living. But someone with a hand on the Hush-bells does not want the Hall to speak.

CURSED WHISPERS is a fast-paced urban fantasy mystery of curses, hidden history and loyal friends, set in the secret London beneath the streets. Book Five of The Banned Arbiter Chronicles, best read after The Rogue Alliance.

Some silences must be broken. Say their names.