Maybe he just looked familiar because he was my fox, and he sometimes slept at the foot of my bed, and he kept me company during the long hours in the shop when I was alone. He no longer took up just a little corner of my bed but half of it, because he was tall and broad shouldered, existing in a body he didn’t have before. And for a moment, as I reached to brush the hair out of his face, I forgot that he had been a fox at all, that he wanted to be a fox again.

And with that I quickly retracted my hand. Because once we broke the curse, whether he wanted to be human or not, he would become a fox again.

I was walking a dangerous tightrope where I knew no one would catch me when I fell.

I moved to ease myself off the bed, his fingers falling out of my hair, when he pursed his lips together in his sleep. He grabbed at the pillow I had been lying on and curled it to his chest and pressed it against him, burrowing his face into it. I waited to make sure he was still asleep before I slipped the rest of the way off the bed, put on my shoes and my coat, and left the room.

I needed some space to clear my head. I needed to forget his fingers twining into my hair, how warm he felt against me, how he smelled like lavender and sandalwood—and most of all, I needed to remember that whatever I felt, it wouldn’t last.

None of this would last.

Even as Fox professed that I should not have died in the wood all those years ago, it was still coming for me. I didn’t have time for these kinds of feelings. They were better left for long summer days and lazy winter nights in the flower shop. They were better left for girls who did not hide behind garden walls.

For princesses, not cursed gardeners’ daughters.

And what awaited us in the Wildwood.

I was thankful for the quiet of the fortress as I traveled along hallway after hallway, making my way toward the heart of the fortress. It was then that someone crossed down the hall in front of me, white ribbons in her short hair. She was alone, carrying a jar under her arm.

Petra.

Against my better judgment, I crept after her. She climbed the stairs, higher and higher in the fortress, until she opened a door onto the rooftop. It was a garden of sorts, with flower beds of dark green plants and soft white daisies bending in the morning wind. Dawn was fast approaching, the gray bleeding with pinks and oranges across the horizon, and it made the Wildwood below look as though it were on fire.

The wind from the east played with the long ribbons in her hair. I watched silently as Petra muttered over the jar she was holding. Then she tipped it over, and out poured flower petals, whites and violets and blues and yellows and reds and oranges, all the colors I’d seen in the fortress’s garden. The wind caught them and took them far into the Wilds. Petra murmured a prayer I could barely hear, to keep Voryn safe, and its people fed, and the mists deep and vast. I wondered if the prayer worked. If it reached the Lady.

Perhaps if I had prayed and offered up petals of roses and daisies and bluebells, then my mother would still be alive, too. No, I doubt that would’ve made a difference.

When the jar was empty, Petra finally glanced over her shoulder at me. She knew I had been there, watching, though she didn’t seem angry.

“How do you do it?” she asked, motioning to my wounded hand. There was blood still under my nails. I didn’t think I’d ever get it out. “Is it some dark magic? Did you sell your soul to some ancient? A pact with an old god? That bear of yours?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“How do you not know?”

In reply, all I could do was unbandage my hand and pick off a small scab. A tinge of blood beaded on my palm, and I took one of the white flowers from my hair and wiped the blood on one of the petals. The flower began to grow, multiply, building up in my cupped hands, until I set the bouquet free into the wind.

Petra watched, astonishment overpowering her anger.

I explained shakily, “I was supposed to be woodcursed, but my mother sacrificed her life for me. I’ve always thought . . . maybe her love for me transformed the woodcurse into this, and I survived. This curse is the last bit of her I have left, and so when the curse breaks—I guess my magic will go, too. I know it’s silly to hold on to that. My mother wouldn’t really approve. She said that the people who die never really leave. That we carry them with every breath we take, until the wind itself is gone.”

“The Grandmaster’s daughter used to say that, too,” Petra replied quietly. “She said that if the Lady of the Wilds is dead, we carry her with us in every breath. We breathe her in. We become her.”

“It’s a good thought.”

“But I don’t think she’s dead.” Petra turned to me, and against the backdrop of the gray morning light she looked almost ethereal. “If she were, then how do you have your magic, Cerys? How is the fog still here? How are the ancients still living? How is the curse still set?”

I didn’t know—I’d just assumed that curses and magic lingered after the magic bearer died. But if that was the case, then why did the crown feast off the people whose brow it sat upon? Because I remembered the power from the crown, the way it felt to be stripped of it, like someone ripping a second skin from my body. I hugged myself tightly against the chill of the morning. The painting in the Grandmaster’s private rooms haunted me, King Sunder painted as a demon, the wood on fire.

When I didn’t say anything, Petra went on. “You aren’t like the Aloriyans I imagined. You trekked among the beasts and briars, and the deep heart led you all the way to Voryn.”

“The deep heart?”

A small spread across her lips. “It’s what we call that feeling inside you, the part that leads you, draws you forward—toward some great purpose.”

“Ah.”

I didn’t feel like I had been drawn anywhere, only dragged and pushed and shoved—but I liked the thought of it. I wondered if my mother had a deep heart guiding her, too. If that was how she found us in the wood all those years ago.

Petra bowed. “I’ll excuse myself. I have a long day ahead of me. The Grandmaster will have me escorting you first thing this morning.”

But then she paused and said before she left, “Please be careful of the Grandmaster. Her sole duty is to protect this city, and in her eyes you aren’t a part of it.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I replied.

When she left, I sat down on the edge of the building to watch the sunrise, tracing my thumb across the wound on my hand. You trekked among the beasts and briars, Petra had said, and once I returned the crown, I wouldn’t even do that. I would be no one again—no one spectacular, anyway, and the last bit of my mother would be gone.

Fox would be gone, too.

He had said he didn’t want to become a fox again—but I didn’t see another choice. We were almost there, almost at the end. We just had to return the crown to the heart of the wood and break the curse and save the kingdom. But things were so much more complicated than that.

There wasn’t another way to break the curse on the wood without both Fox and me giving up what we wanted. Without my power, Fox couldn’t be human—as far as I knew—and without the curse in the wood, would have my power. If only I could cure every bone-eater like I had Fox—

That’s when I noticed a shadow at the gates of the city. It was tall and spindly, and although it was so far away, I knew the shape of it too well.

An ancient had broken through the fog, and it stood at the gates of Voryn.

34

The Cowardly Truth

Fox

I WOKE UP with a pillow curled to my chest and Daisy nowhere in sight—which immediately catapulted me into full-on panic. I quickly sat up, wondering where she’d gone, when I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. A figure riffled through the wardrobe. I tensed, curling my fingers into fists. I no longer had claws, and I couldn’t make out the person’s face.

I rose swiftly into a crouch, flicking my wrist. It was second nature, like breathing. A spark of fire bloomed onto my fingers. I threw it at the intruder, who ducked. It burst into sparks on the wall behind them. “You better have a good reason to be—wait!” I called as the shadow darted out of the room.

I tried to go after them, but my legs tangled in the sheets. I pried them off and lurched for the door, but by the time I got into the hallway, whoever it was had vanished.

I snapped my teeth together agitatedly. Who was that? And where was Daisy?

Returning to the room, I nosed into the wardrobe the intruder had been riffling through and found Daisy’s old sash that she had tied the crown to, along with our old clothes. It didn’t take a mastermind to figure out what they were looking for—the crown. Too bad they wouldn’t find it.

I glanced up at the burn mark on the wall.

And that made me think of a question that I wanted an answer to—one that Daisy couldn’t provide, but luckily I knew someone else who could, and I knew exactly where he’d be.

Seren looked up when I came within a few feet of his cell. His hands were bound, and he sat cross-legged in the middle of the damp stones. The flowers had bloomed again over his shoulder, mostly lavender from the Sundermount, and they were striking against his torn dark tunic. He didn’t seem all that surprised to see me.

“Let me guess,” the corpse said with a tired sigh. “You have questions.”

There was a handful of guards patrolling the area, so we had to be quiet if I wanted to ask him what I needed to know. I crouched down by the cell bars and curled my finger, silently mouthing, Come here.

With a roll of his eyes, he shimmied toward me. Closer, a little closer—when he was within arm’s reach, I grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and forced him against the cell bars. He hissed in discomfort. I didn’t care; he’d almost killed Daisy.

But the moment I grabbed him, I knew something was . . . off. It wasn’t the way he smelled, or the pallor of his face. It was something I couldn’t place. A strange energy or magnetism. And what was more . . . “Kingsteeth, you aren’t woodcursed anymore.”

“I’m so glad you have eyes,” he replied calmly.