Cokal, Susann

"Blood calls to blood; charm calls to charm. It is the way of the world. Come close and tell us your dreams. Sanna is a mermaid -- but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna's people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever." --publisher's website.

On the eve of Princess Sophia's wedding, the Scandinavian city of Skyggehavn prepares to fete the occasion with a sumptuous display of riches. A mysterious illness plagues the royal family, threatening the lives of the throne's heirs, and a courtier's wolfish hunger for the king's favors sets a devious plot in motion. In the palace at Skyggehave, things are seldom as they seem -- and when a single errant prick of a needle sets off a series of events that will alter the course of history, the fates of seamstress Ava Bingen and mute nursemaid Midi Sorte become irrevocably intertwined.

On the eve of Princess Sophia's wedding the Scandinavian city of Skyggehavn prepares to fete the occasion with a sumptuous display of riches. Yet beneath the veneer of celebration, a shiver of darkness creeps through the palace halls. A mysterious illness plagues the royal family, threatening the lives of the throne's heirs, and a courtier's wolfish hunger for the king's favors sets a devious plot in motion. In the palace at Skyggehave, things are seldom as they seem -- and when a single errant prick of a needle sets off a series of events that will alter the course of history, the fates of seamstress Ava Bingen and mute nursemaid Midi Sorte become irrevocably intertwined.

In a fictional Renaissance court that is rife with political intrigue, brutality, and magic, three women of different social stations do whatever it takes to survive devious plotters and a deadly plague.

The night before Princess Sophia of Skyggehavn's wedding, a darkness is set in motion by the single wayward prick of seamstress Ava Bingen's needle, aggravating the secret sickness that affects all the royal family. The fate of the mute nursemaid Midi Sorte is bound now to Ava's, and through deceitful palace intrigue and power-lust, the two women must find a way to help each other survive.