Excerpt from Deathly Fates by Tesia Tsai, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Although it wasn't easy to maintain while waves of emotions rippled past me.

As a ganshi priestess, I was spiritually attuned to the feelings of the deceased—particularly the remnants of fear, shock, regret, or sorrow that accompanied their last breaths. Sometimes, if I wasn't careful, the more intense emotions could break past my walls of tranquility and strike me with memories of the dead's final moments, their happiest times, or their greatest heartbreaks.

Walking among a felled army tested the limits of my training, but I managed to withstand the grief weighing over the field. I had a job to do.

I spent the following hours trudging through soft earth. I didn't bother resting for lunch; surrounded by decay and misery, I had no appetite. The sun was halfway down the sky when I found the identification papers I was searching for. The name matched the one from the official's documents: Renshu.

I would've hesitated—neither the documents nor identification papers offered a family name—if the soldier's face didn't match the portrait. He was young, around my age. Handsome too. Dried blood caked the side of his head, spilled from a wound that'd likely been inflicted from the killing blow. A cut blemished his jaw and dirt dusted his skin, but his straight nose, his thick brows, and the mole by his eye were undeniably the same as the drawing's.

I pressed my fingers to his neck, sensing the terror that'd colored his death and forcing myself to brush it aside. No sign of a pulse. I proceeded to prepare the reanimation talisman. Moving habitually, I attached the iron bells to my staff and rang them gently while I murmured incantations. As I placed the consecrated paper on his forehead, I wondered how someone worth so much money-that was why I'd taken the job, after all—could end up dying so tragically, so young. What a terrible waste.

Excerpted from Deathly Fates by Tesia Tsai. Copyright © 2026 by Tesia Tsai. Excerpted by permission of Wednesday Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.