It begins with a night seminar in the ivy-choked village hall of Wychwood-on-Lea. "Wishcraft and Rural Charms 302," presided over by a woman the locals only call "the Curator." Most of the cohort treat the Curator’s tales of wish-brokers and hedge-spirits as performance art, but Rowan Elmsley has always believed the woods are listening. When she hunts down a rumored figure called the Penny Warden—a keeper of the wishing well who can tell you the price of any wish—the world finally tilts into sense. Except the Penny Warden counts out thirteen tarnished coins and says Rowan will be emptied of her name at the thirteenth stroke of tomorrow’s midnight unless she recovers an old relic known as the Hollowing Heart.
With the hours unspooling, Rowan is drawn deeper into a back-alley economy of bottled breezes, foxfire maps, and contracts inked in elder sap, all in the shadow of Wychwood and the lights of Oxford. And into the orbit of a magnetic stranger, Elias North, who feels like a dare carved into bark. He swears Rowan’s sister, Freyja, sent him to keep her alive. As they follow crumbs—from the Rollright Stones to a bookshop called Fox & Fallow—their path shudders with lies. Even the Curator has a ledger, and even Elias edits the truth. If Rowan cannot choose the right liar before the clock’s false chime, not even the Hollowing Heart will return what the well is already taking.
