Excerpt from The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"But you have to tell him before—"

"I'll tell him! Just shut up about it."

Ainsel was lingering, picking at the notches in the wood, and North was thinking scathing thoughts about how he was so prettily useless he couldn't even climb a stile, when she realized that he was waiting for her to go first.

"Oh," she said. "Thanks." She climbed over it as fast as she could. Her jumper hung loose, but she didn't want Ainsel to look too closely.

They remained silent as they walked through the farmland. The only sound was the wind in the trees and the tinny jingle of bells from their clothing. Ainsel was ungrateful and dull, but North had known him her whole life; she should try to think of something to say, anything to break the awkward silence, but she couldn't. Never mind friendship or familiarity. It was too early to think straight.

At the edge of the trees, they paused. North had never been inside a copse before, and she could guess from the look on Ain¬sel's face that he hadn't either. The woods were old—some of the trees were prehistoric, people said—and they'd all heard stories about the awful things that landlockers did in there. She bent and peered into the copse. The ground was clear, but above that the trees twisted together, interlocking black shapes too dense for them to see far. Scraps of colored fabric were tied around some of the branches. There were little piles of things at the base of several trees: shiny objects, scraps of paper, soft-looking moss. A shrine? An offering? North looked over her shoulder to see Ainsel reach out his hand to touch a twig, then think better of it.

"Jarrow?" hissed North into the dimness beneath the trees. In answer, the shush of leaves. She tried to edge her body in side¬ways, but it was too overgrown. She reached up and took hold of a thin branch, ready to snap it off and make room to slide through.

"North! No!" Red Gold came tearing around the edge of the trees, arms outstretched as if to catch her. "You mustn't!"

She stepped back on to the path. "It's okay. There's no one around to see."

Red Gold slapped her hands away from the trees, even though she'd already stepped back from them. Her skin burned. "That doesn't matter. Don't you know that the trees are sacred?" He elbowed past her and examined the branch she'd touched, as if she'd left dirty fingerprints on it.

"Oh come on, you can't believe in—" North stopped at the look on Red Gold's face. As a dampling he did not need to wor¬ship the gods of the land, but apparently he did anyway.

"This is where we're from, child," he said.

"But I'm not—"

He sucked his teeth and made a tutting sound. "Not you, North! Me and my boy. We're landlockers, you know. The land is where we're from, and the land is where we'll return." North looked away so that Red Gold wouldn't see her expression of dis¬gust. "And when you're married," continued Red Gold, "it will be on land."

"But when did you decide this?" Ainsel seemed to be strug¬gling not to shout. He swallowed hard and lowered his voice. "How long do we have until—when is the happy day?"

North tried to keep her face neutral. Bad enough to go on to land, and bad enough to have to marry Ainsel—now Red Gold wanted to combine the two? But it would be fine. Ainsel would tell him. There would be no wedding, on land or at sea.

The ringmaster brought his great paw down on his son's shoulder. "I decided, and that's all that matters. You and our north child will be married when we get to the North-East 19 archi¬pelago. The capital, by the World Tree. It's not usually allowed for landlockers who aren't—well, who don't currently live on land. But I've bought special permission. Because you are special, my boy. You're special because you're mine."

Reprinted from The Gracekeepers Copyright © 2015 by Kirsty Logan. To be published by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, on May 19, 2015.