622162 Where the Dark Stands Still Paperback by A.B. Poranek

Raised in a small village near the spirit-wood, Liska Radost knows that Magic is monstrous, and its practitioners, monsters. After a deadly mistake, Liska delves into the dangerous spirit-wood, guarded by a demon to steal a mythical fern flower. Pluck it, and she can use its one wish to banish her own power. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to the horrors of the Czantory, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood - The Leszy - a bargain seems better than death: one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower and its wish. Whisked away to his crumbling manor, Liska soon makes an unsettling discovery. She is not the first person to strike this bargain. And If Liska wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her taciturn host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts—figurative and literal—of his past. Something wakes in the woods, killing off villagers one by one. Something that Frightens even The Leszy … something that cannot be defeated unless Liska embraces the monster she’s always feared becoming.