R.J. Vickers 

When ten and ten years have swiftly gone by,
These five luckless children will come back to die.

 

So goes the curse of Castle Fayne. Desperate for a child, the queen of Fayne Forest unleashes an ancient, evil magic, which casts her home into shadow and promises the doom of her son and four other children born within the castle walls. Any soul who leaves the castle will be drawn inexorably back…and unless the curse is undone, it will claim five innocent lives.

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Raised as a lost princess, Madeia has waited all her life for the day she returns to claim her throne. But a blizzard descends on her company as they travel to the city, and she finds herself lost in the woods.

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Bastian has never fit in with the cheerful family of minstrels who raised him. Incurably tone-deaf, with a voice that scares away geese, he must leave the nest to find his place in the world. Warned of a dark curse, he promises to stay far away from the woods.

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Lonely and isolated, Cormath has owned a blacksmith’s shop ever since he left home. When strangers start showing up on his doorstep to utter strange warnings, he welcomes them in. None of them can remember how they got to his home; the last they can recall, they had stumbled across a castle deep in the woods.

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Raised by a witch of Fayne Forest, Camille is confident she understands the magic of the forest—and the curse that drove her from Castle Fayne. She returns to the castle as her time runs out, ready to save the day. But something far more dangerous than she expects is lurking in the woods.

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Born of the curse, Dessa is the only child in Castle Fayne. She has seen what the Beast is capable of. But she cannot talk. As the five children of the curse, now grown, begin reappearing outside the gates of Castle Fayne, she knows the hour is late. The curse is upon them at last.