Ashes Beneath the Hollow Mountain

In Ashes beneath the Hollow Mountain, Aveline Harrow lives in a village ruled by an ancient ritual: at the beginning of every year, one woman is chosen as a sacrifice to keep the dead from rising. When the first bell wakes her, Aveline realizes her name has been chosen. She tries to run, barricading herself in her room and begging for more time, but the village's fear is older than mercy. At twenty-four, with her twenty-fifth birthday only three months away, she is dressed, mourned, and prepared for the monster said to live beneath Hollow Mountain.

But the creature waiting below is not what the stories promised. At first, he is terrifying to Aveline - powerful, shadowed, and inhuman - yet there is something dangerously beautiful about him. As she survives the world beneath the mountain, Aveline begins to see that he may not be the villain the village claims. Through his actions, she learns he was trapped by a cruel bargain between the Gods, given the wrong end of a deal that made him into a monster. Now Aveline must uncover whether the village knows the truth and has been sacrificing women for its own benefit, or whether the old warnings are real , and if the sacrifices stop, the dead will rise and destroy the world.