House of Roots and Ruin

The second installment in the Sisters of the Salt series, House of Roots and Ruin follows Verity Thaumas, the youngest of 12 sisters in the noble Thaumas family. Six of Verity's sisters, along with both her parents, died in a string of tragedies throughout her childhood, events she cannot remember. Now nearly 18, Verity lives at the family estate of Highmoor on the island of Salten under the watchful eye of her oldest sister, Camille, the Duchess of Salann, painting portraits of Camille's children and longing for a life beyond the islands.

When a letter arrives from Dauphine Laurent, Duchess of Bloem, offering Verity a commission to paint the portrait of her son Alexander, Verity secretly mails her acceptance. Camille erupts in fury, insisting Verity is "not like" her other sisters. That night, Camille reveals the reason for her protectiveness: Verity has always been able to see ghosts without knowing it. To prove it, Camille summons her valet, Roland, who states that Verity's beloved nursemaid, Hanna Whitten, has been dead for 12 years. Hanna confirms she is a ghost who chose to stay behind after dying in the fire that killed Verity's parents because young Verity grabbed her hand and would not let go. Hanna warns Verity not to go to Chauntilalie, the Laurent estate, sensing danger she cannot articulate. Verity, determined to claim her independence, flees Highmoor before dawn.

After a week of travel, Verity arrives in Bloem, a province devoted to Arina, goddess of love, beauty, and the arts, where flowers carry symbolic meanings central to daily life. Alexander Laurent greets her at the manor in his wicker wheelchair, paralyzed from the thighs down since a childhood fall. His mother, Dauphine, is warm and welcoming. His father, Gerard, is an eccentric botanist who crossbreeds plants in a massive greenhouse. Gerard's elderly mother, Marguerite Laurent, denounces Verity as one of the "cursed Thaumas girls" and leaves the estate in protest.

As Verity begins sketching Alex, they develop an affectionate rapport. Alex shares his vision for reforming Bloem's culture of superficiality, and Verity is drawn to his intelligence and moral conviction. Meanwhile, Gerard shows Verity his poison garden, where she faints from toxic laurel fumes and experiences a terrifying vision of her six dead sisters and a black-eyed wraith who orders her to leave. Gerard presses her to describe what she saw, but Verity lies, fearing that revealing her abilities would cost her place at Chauntilalie. She also discovers that the sage-and-salt candles her sister Annaleigh has been sending are a traditional ward against ghosts, meaning Annaleigh has known about Verity's abilities all along.

Alex proposes in a glass dome submerged beneath the estate's lake, and Verity accepts. Her nights, however, grow increasingly disturbed. Screams she attributes to white peacocks wake her repeatedly, and Gerard gives her a poppy tea that sends her into unnaturally deep sleep. One night, she encounters the ghost of a young woman named Constance, whom she had previously mistaken for Gerard's living mistress. Following Constance through a hidden passage, Verity watches the ghost relive her own murder: stabbed with gardening shears, pleading for her babies' lives. Beyond the murder scene, Verity discovers a hidden nursery containing three cribs. The babies inside have plant-like features, with fern-like arms, unfurling tendrils, and fingers made of curling vines in the same purple shade as Gerard's hybrid flowers.

During what Verity believes is a portrait session, the young man before her kisses her with unfamiliar intensity. She responds before noticing a bronze ring around his irises that Alex does not have. The impostor reveals himself as Viktor, one of Alex's identical triplet brothers. His brother Julien, who can read minds, also emerges from hiding. They explain that Gerard sent them to the remote Laurent estate of Marchioly House as small children because their abilities were deemed too dangerous: Viktor can create and control fire, and Julien can read thoughts. They escaped after a fire and have been hiding in Chauntilalie's secret passages, searching for documents to prove their identity.

Verity helps the brothers break into Gerard's locked study. Inside, they find a false bookcase concealing dozens of jars of preserved fetal remains. Gerard's journals reveal he has been experimenting on women with divine bloodlines, injecting botanical compounds into their wombs to produce offspring with supernatural traits. The pink candles throughout the manor contain a hallucinogenic poison, and the poppy tea is a sedative. Gerard has also intercepted all of Verity's correspondence, destroying her sisters' letters to isolate her.

Verity tells Alex everything. He is shaken but acknowledges Viktor and Julien as his brothers. Julien declares he will formally abdicate the ducal title in Alex's favor. They agree that Verity will question Dauphine before going to the authorities. Viktor's growing attraction to Verity creates tension; he kisses her, but she firmly rejects him. A prophetic dream that night shows their union causing catastrophic destruction.

Verity deliberately poisons herself to summon the black-eyed wraith from her earlier vision, who reveals herself as Kosamaras, the Harbinger of nightmares and madness. Kosamaras explains that years earlier, she beguiled the Thaumas sisters as part of a bargain with their stepmother, Morella. When the beguiling ended, most sisters recovered, but Verity's mind had a predisposition that was permanently pried open, granting her the lasting ability to see ghosts. Kosamaras warns that Verity and "that boy" will produce offspring terrible enough to bring down the gods and urges her to flee.

At a tavern, Verity questions Dauphine, who grows candid after drinking wine that has been laced with a sedative by Gerard, intended for a different woman. Dauphine reveals she knew about Gerard's experiments from the start and initially supported them, but after seeing the brothers' dangerous abilities, she secretly sabotaged subsequent pregnancies. She explains Gerard's ultimate goal: not to communicate with the gods but to create one. Dauphine drinks too much of the drugged wine and dies from the overdose after returning to Chauntilalie.

When Alex confronts Gerard in his study, Gerard defends his work, claiming he engineered Alex to be immortal and citing the boy's survival of a 42-foot fall from the balcony at age four, a fall caused when Viktor pushed him. Viktor and Julien arrive, and the confrontation turns violent. Viktor commands Julien to attack; Julien slams Gerard's head into the desk, killing him. Viktor then stabs Julien in the throat, eliminating him as a rival heir, and pursues Alex and Verity through the manor. Marguerite, who secretly orchestrated the brothers' escape to pair Viktor with Verity, attacks Verity with a fireplace tool. Alex and Viktor fight on the balcony above the atrium, and Viktor falls over the railing to his death.

Camille, who traveled to Bloem to reconcile with Verity, arrives at the deserted manor, finds Marguerite standing over Verity's unconscious body, and kills the old woman with a fireplace poker. Verity wakes a day later with a broken wrist and cracked ribs. The sisters reconcile. Alex, badly beaten with a shattered nose and damaged eyes, tells Verity he would understand if she wanted to end the engagement. She refuses, declaring her love. Reflecting on Kosamaras's warning, Verity realizes the Harbinger meant Viktor, not Alex.

Three days later, Verity and Alex marry in a quiet ceremony. The next morning, Verity notices Alex absently crossing one ankle over the other, a small, unconscious movement of his supposedly paralyzed legs. In an epilogue set in the Laurent family crypt, a young Sister of the Ardor, a member of Bloem's religious burial order, prepares Viktor's body and watches his fingers twitch with unmistakable life, suggesting he may share Alex's engineered immortality.