A Harvest of Hearts

In a kingdom where real magic runs on human hearts, the beautiful, ageless sorceresses who serve the king periodically visit outlying villages, siphoning small pieces of heart from smitten onlookers to fuel their spells. The villagers accept this arrangement as the price for prosperity, peace, and healthy births. Foss, a plain, strong-armed butcher's daughter, narrates her life in one such village, where she works alongside her loving father, Da. Foss's mother died giving birth to her, an almost unheard-of event under the sorceresses' protections, which marks Foss as cursed in the community's eyes. She grows up feeling fundamentally unlovable, a belief cemented when Aron Hodges, a boy she had feelings for, turns a grape-crushing outing into a cruel prank, bottling the results as "Toad Wine."

The village has never seen a male magic-worker. When a sorcerer arrives and sweeps the crowd with his gray-blue gaze, his eyes land on Foss, and she collapses from a sensation like a thorn driven through her foot. In the following days, she develops heartsickness, a magical ailment marked by fever, suffocating dreams, and an obsessive pull toward the sorcerer. Da's remedies fail. Foss seeks out Dav Mallet, the one villager previously taken by a sorceress, who warns her not to follow, pressing her hand to his hollow chest. The pull worsens until Foss has no choice. She leaves a note for Da and departs in the night.

Traveling toward the city, Foss learns that villages closer to the capital supply food in exchange for exemption from heart harvesting, while outlying villages like hers bear the full cost. In the city, she reaches the sorcerer's house, a structure of smooth black substance that appears to be solidified magic. During a street brawl, she pockets a small wizened object she will later learn is a dried human heart. The doors open automatically. A black cat escorts her to the sorcerer, who sprawls across a throne amid rotting food. He does not recognize her. Foss announces she has come to be his housekeeper, and he accepts.

Foss discovers the House, as she calls the magical dwelling, grants genuine needs. The cat names himself Cornelius and explains that it responds to real needs rather than wants. The House provides a kitchen, bedchamber, and any cooking ingredient Foss requests. She cooks Da's recipes for the sorcerer, who gradually begins requesting dishes and asking for stories about village life. Meanwhile, Foss searches the House for her heart, but it reveals rooms at its own pace.

When Foss asks what the hearts are used for, the sorcerer gives a rehearsed answer and reveals his name is Sylvester. Over subsequent conversations, he discloses that the king is his father and father to all 13 magic-workers. They were not born but made: street children bought or taken, then transformed through a years-long process. Sylvester is the only male to survive, and his magic is powerful but erratic.

At the city market, they encounter Clarissa, a golden-haired sorceress riding a rickshaw pulled by Colin, a collared, blank-faced human servant. While Sylvester speaks with Clarissa, Foss meets a scribe named Basil, who recognizes she has been snagged, the term for having one's heart partially taken or enchanted by a magic-worker. Basil directs her to a secret midnight society of snagged people, including Nat, a young boy missing his entire heart; Em, a motherly woman; and Jol, a young man discarded by his sorceress. All are developing a green-gray mold on their chests that accelerates their deaths. Basil claims a figure called the Weftwitch, who lives beyond the kingdom's borders, can repair hearts, and begs Foss to find hearts inside the House. Cornelius later tells Foss about the Other House, the original nonmagical building occupying the same space as Sylvester's magical one, accessible by a mental trick he calls thinking sideways.

Clarissa pressures Sylvester to harvest Foss's heart, warning their father will act if he does not. Sylvester departs to harvest elsewhere. While he is away, Foss witnesses Jol dying as the mold consumes his chest. When Sylvester returns, he admits he went to Foss's village intending to harvest but chose not to. The prepared spell latched onto Foss accidentally; he never took any piece of her heart, and the tangled binding cannot be undone. When Foss suggests a kiss might break it, Sylvester tries, coolly and experimentally. It does not work. When Clarissa discovers the heart he presents is a black market fake, she demands he harvest Foss immediately, demonstrating the process on Colin.

Clarissa tries to harvest Foss but cannot penetrate her innate resistance. Foss drags Colin into the Other House and escapes into the city. At the Snagged meeting place, she copies a map bearing the Weftwitch's name. Before anyone can flee, all 12 sorceresses arrive and harvest the remaining hearts from every snagged person. Basil, Nat, Em, and the others die. Foss escapes but is caught by a mist barrier conjured by the king's magic and loses consciousness.

Foss wakes in the palace dungeon beside Millie, a young street urchin who is the king's next candidate for transformation. King Darius is an ugly, flickering figure. Foss escapes by thinking sideways into the nonmagical structure beneath the palace. In the heart storeroom, the king reveals thousands of stored hearts corrupted by mold and declares Foss's resistance the key to an inoculation. Clarissa extracts half of Foss's heart. Colin frees Foss in a last act of humanity, and Clarissa kills him. Foss seizes a meat cleaver and kills Clarissa. Sylvester arrives, puts the palace to sleep with heart magic, and they flee with Foss's half heart.

They stop at Foss's village, where Da reveals that Dav killed himself. Da promises to warn neighboring villages. At the border, a vast wall of mist made from trapped souls blocks their path. Foss insists Sylvester use her half heart to breach it. The heart disintegrates into ash, opening a tunnel. On the other side, guards confine Sylvester, treating magic-workers from what they call the Invisible Kingdom, their name for Darius's realm, with extreme caution. The headwoman explains the mist has expanded for a century, and the heart corruption was created by her kingdom's people to slow its advance.

In a magic-suppressing forest, all enchantment ceases and the heartsickness lifts. The Weftwitch, a practical middle-aged woman, explains that she and Foss share innate resistance to magic. She tells Foss her mother's death was an ordinary tragedy, not a curse. The Weftwitch cannot repair hearts; the promise was a lure. She gives Foss a raven seal containing a spell powerful enough to kill all heart-magic users, including Sylvester. Foss accepts without telling him. That evening, free from the spell, Foss recognizes genuine feelings for Sylvester, and they make love. In the morning, the heartsickness returns outside the forest, and Foss tells Sylvester they cannot be intimate again until the spell breaks.

Sylvester summons the House as a tunnel back through the mist; both structures collapse behind them. In the deserted city, they raid the palace for uncorrupted hearts and rescue Millie from a transformation chamber. The king strikes Sylvester with a near-fatal spell, traced to Foss's village, where he has gathered hundreds of bespelled villagers. Da is bound as a hostage, flanked by 11 sorceresses and carts of harvested hearts.

Foss surrenders in exchange for Da's release. Sylvester challenges his father, who dismisses him by having a sorceress rip out Aron's heart. Sylvester collapses. During a final embrace, he pickpockets the seal from Foss, having overheard her conversation with the Weftwitch. He activates it, and the spell kills all 11 sorceresses, the king, and Sylvester himself. The heartsickness lifts from Foss permanently.

Foss sits with Sylvester's body in the rain, reasoning that if their bond gave him genuine humanity, the human part might survive the spell that killed the magical parts. She places her hand on his chest and kisses him. Sylvester stirs. His face bears new imperfections: a crooked nose, freckles, a crooked tooth. His grand magic is gone, though he can still create small toys of flame. The kingdom has no king and no magical protections. The border mist dissolves, freeing trapped souls. Crops return to natural patterns, and Foss's birth is no longer considered cursed. Millie is raised by Da with no memory of her ordeal. Sylvester devises pendant charms reconnecting heart pieces with their original owners, keeping surviving snagged people alive while they work toward a cure. Foss looks forward to a life she once thought impossible: partnership, family, and a future free of fear.