Tess Eriksson grew up in Stenland, a small island off the coast of Scotland, knowing that one day she—or her best friends, or any other woman on the island—could wake up with three black lines on their forehead, the mark of a skeld. Skeld Season comes around without warning and while the mark is temporary, the people that the three skelds can turn to stone are very much dead. This is how Tess’s mother killed Soren’s parents. It may have been an accident, but that didn’t make it any easier to forgive.   Maybe for this reason alone Tess and Soren should not have fallen in love. Since the time her mother was a skeld, Tess has wanted to leave Stenland, to run from the windswept island, from her family and friends, unwilling to bear the responsibility of one day killing anyone, let alone someone she loved. Soren has been determined to stay, to live out his life in the place he knows as home, even if that life could be cut short during the la