The Washwoman at the River's End

The first book in the Curse of the Fates series is set in Na Trì, a kingdom governed by three Fates: the Weaver, the Measurer, and the Cutter, who spin, measure, and sever the threads of every mortal life. Magic is bestowed through dàn, rune-like tattoos inked onto the skin, and all souls pass after death into a dark mist called the After, where three gods guard the passage to the next world.

For over a century, a woman named Bea has been chained to the River Bàsail, cursed to wash the death-clothes of every person who dies in the kingdom. Known as the Washwoman, or the Bean-Nighe, she is a figure of legend and terror. Blood permanently stains her hands, and she bears a dàn of immortality she cannot explain. Part of her curse compels her to answer truthfully whenever someone catches hold of her and speaks the ritual words. Hidden beneath her stone pillow are three of the five items needed to complete a counter-spell that could break her curse.

Bea's routine shatters when the river sends her a vision unlike any before: Instead of witnessing a death, she sees a young woman twirling joyfully on a hillside. A massive dragon Bea has named Lolly, which has circled the glen for decades without landing, touches down for the first time. That night, the Muse of Love and Madness, a lesser goddess, emerges from the river to warn Bea that a man is coming, someone who will remember and someone Bea destroyed.

In the village of Vengach, a Dideanair (guardian-soldier) named Brennen visits the grave of Marsaili Lennox, his murdered betrothed. He believes the Washwoman killed Marsaili and her family during Bea's only escape from the river six years earlier. On Samhain, a holiday honoring the dead, Brennen carves an unbreakable vow into his palm: He will destroy Marsaili's killer before the next Samhain, or his soul will belong to Ban-dia a' Bhàis, the goddess of death. The Cutter, Cailleach, then summons Brennen and assigns him to guard the Washwoman. She reveals she could not sever Bea's thread when she tried to execute her and wants Brennen to find a way to kill her. To ensure obedience, Cailleach holds up the life-threads of his seven siblings, including his youngest sister Saoirse, making clear that failure means their deaths.

Brennen arrives at the river expecting a monster and finds a slight, bruised woman with red hair. In nearby Dalbàsail, he meets Harold, an elderly gardener who fears the Washwoman, and Theo, a barkeep who has never believed her legend. Bea helps a woman named Kenna escape her abusive husband. Kenna catches hold of Bea and speaks the ritual words, triggering the curse's compulsion, and Bea directs her to the Faerie Pools, a secluded cliffside refuge. When the husband arrives demanding answers, Bea endures a beating rather than reveal Kenna's location. Later, Brennen intervenes when he discovers a village boy's father beating the boy's mother, Anna. Brennen dissolves the marriage by cutting the couple's handfasting tie and arranges for Anna and her children to stay at Theo's tavern.

Over the following weeks, the antagonism between Brennen and Bea erodes. When Brennen catches Bea's hand to stop her from falling, his dàn of steadiness transfers from his skin to hers, a phenomenon neither can explain. Additional dàn transfer when Brennen dives into a flash flood to save her from drowning. Bea's visions also change: Rather than seeing deaths, she is transported into the final happy moments of people about to die. She washes the clothes of a woman from Brennen's home village whose sister confirms she was listed among the kingdom's disappeared, not the dead. The disappeared women, Brennen and Bea realize, are being killed. Bea also has recurring visions of a golden-haired woman living near the Faerie Pools, visions that follow the same anomalous pattern.

Harold gives Brennen an illegal family journal documenting generations of attempts to kill Bea, and Brennen begins separating his desire for justice from the cruelty she has endured. When he warns Cailleach that the missing women are dead, the Cutter dismisses him and orders him away for a fortnight. During this absence, Brennen's friend Garrick, a fellow Dideanair, reveals he has secretly embedded himself in Cailleach's castle as a member of the ceatharnaich (rebel resistance). Garrick shares that magic once flowed freely from the earth rather than being controlled by the Fates.

Returning to the river, Brennen finds Bea tormented by the souls of dead women who emerge from the After at night. Cailleach arrives in Dalbàsail and publicly executes Harold by severing his thread prematurely. Bea washes his clothes in the same anomalous pattern. The evidence is clear: The Cutter herself is killing people outside her sisters' design. In her next vision, Bea slashes through a woman's dedication dàn, severing the connection to the Cutter's power. No death-clothes appear, and the woman survives.

As their bond deepens, Brennen gives Bea new clothing, feeds her, and removes the boundary stakes he planted on arrival. They grow physically intimate, though the prohibition against skin contact maintains a charged distance. When Bea explains that she tried to save her friend Molly rather than killing Molly out of jealousy as Cailleach claims, another crack forms in the story Brennen has believed his entire life.

The breaking point arrives when Saoirse's death-clothes float downstream, the little girl killed by Athair, Cailleach's dragon. Devastated, Brennen uses the curse's compulsion to force Bea to remember the Vengach murders. The suppressed memory surfaces: Cailleach arrived on Athair, burned Marsaili's family alive, then forced Bea's hand around a dagger and dragged it across Marsaili's throat. The Cutter then manipulated Bea's memories to make her believe she was the murderer. Brennen realizes his vow to destroy Marsaili's killer now applies to Cailleach.

Bea reveals the curse-breaking spell, explaining she has been gathering the required items as penance and still needs two: a name given in love and a promise broken. Brennen presents her with a wooden skylark he has been carving, her name inscribed on its belly. He retrieves the final item, the broken handfasting tie from Anna's dissolved marriage. As monsters descend from the sky and the Epoch, a once-in-a-century surge of monsters that floods the kingdom, begins, they set the spell items adrift into the After. Bea's chain disintegrates, and she is free. Lolly seizes Bea and dives into the After, and Brennen leaps in after them.

In the After, Lolly, whose true name is Eiridh, bows before Bea. Ban-dia a' Bhàis restores Brennen's memories: He is Am Breitheamh, one of three brother-gods who govern souls in the After. Nearly two centuries ago, he and his brothers, born mortal as Theo and Garrick, volunteered to find and protect the next ascending Cutter, whom the goddess made immortal so Cailleach could not kill her. That ascending Cutter is Bea. Cailleach has been killing women across the kingdom to eliminate anyone who might become Bea's destined sister-Fates, the ascending Weaver and Measurer. Bea accepts the mantle, and the goddess instructs her to complete a series of trials and find her two sisters before Cailleach kills them. Brennen refuses to leave her side, and they step through the golden gates together. In an epilogue set five days earlier, Theo arrives at the Faerie Pools to warn the golden-haired woman from Bea's recurring visions and, upon seeing her, feels an immediate recognition, setting the stage for subsequent volumes.