“Where is he?” I asked as I rounded the stairs down into the prison.

There were no guards anywhere in sight, but Seren was waiting in his cell. Dark eyes and long face and sunken cheekbones, pale skin accented with his midnight hair. He sat leaning against the bars, his hands still bound behind his back. “Why would I know?” he asked, but then his eyes strayed to my sash. “You brought the crown? Do you have a death wish? All the ancients will be coming for it!”

“Then you’d better talk fast, I guess,” I replied patiently. It still made me shiver how much he hadn’t changed since he’d disappeared in the wood. It was like time had stopped for him. “I know he came down here—he must have.”

“He did. And then he left.”

I breathed out through my nose and pressed my forehead against the bars of the cell. If he wasn’t here, then where was he? Think, Cerys. The ancients had already infiltrated the city. We had to stop them, but to do that I had to leave with the crown, but I didn’t want to leave without him. “Damn it, Fox,” I muttered under my breath.

Seren studied me for a moment before he said, “You’ve changed, you know. When you were a little girl, you’d never do anything remotely dangerous. Now you’ve traveled through the entire wood, cursed beasties on your trail, and you never looked back.”

“Well, you haven’t changed at all.”

He shrugged. “I’m dead. I’m not supposed to. And your fox is gone. He’s not coming back, and you’re better off without him.”

That took me by surprise. “Why would you say that?”

He grinned, shark teeth bright and white. “The wood makes monsters of all of us, Cerys, whether or not we have the curse.” He shrugged. “Or maybe I’m just bitter now, and maybe you’re better on your own.”

“You’re wrong. You don’t know him.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t I? Don’t you? C’mon, Cerys, the wood never just takes. It changes.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” I replied exhaustedly—

A screech rushed across the cobblestones.

Seren prickled with panic, the thorns on his shoulders spreading up to his neck, like fur bristling. “You have to get me out of here, Cerys. Now.” He nudged his head toward the desk at the other end of the prison. “There should be a set of keys in one of those drawers. On a key ring. Lots of them—”

“Why?” I asked. “They’re not after you.”

“Oh, but they are, because the wood couldn’t keep me,” he replied nervously, and shifted onto his knees. “Cerys, please. I don’t want those monsters to catch me again. Let me help you. Let me do something right, for once. Please. Don’t leave me.”

I was going to regret this.

I hoped I wouldn’t, but I had a feeling that I would.

But I went to the desk at the front of the prison and was riffling through the drawers when I first heard footsteps on the stairs. They were large, heavy. Not human.

The torches from the stairwell threw a bone-eater’s shadow across the prison’s damp stones, hulking, massive, sharp. It prowled in the graceful way I’d seen before, on all fours, a predator stalking after prey. It knew someone was down here.

I had to hurry.

I grabbed the key ring and hurried back to Seren. He pointed to one of the rusty keys, and I tried it, but no luck. Then the next, and the next. My hands were beginning to shake so badly I could hardly insert the stupid key. But it still wasn’t the right one. So I tried the next. Then the next.

“Open the door . . . ,” Seren begged.

“I’m trying,” I hissed. Another key down. Why were there so many? Who could ever keep them straight?

“Not hard enough, apparently,” he nervously singsonged.

“Do you want me to leave you?” Finally, a key turned, and the lock popped free. I pushed the door open, but Seren quickly shoved it closed again.

His eyes were wide, face pale. He shook his head and whispered, “I think I’ll take my chances in here, actually.”

A voice hissed, slithery like the first chill of winter. “Cccerrysssss.”

Behind me, something low and rumbling echoed down the prison corridor.

I glanced over my shoulder at the creature with us, and my heart sank down to the bottom of the sea. The bone-eater’s golden hair shimmered in the orange light from the sconces. She inclined her head, the skin on her face having peeled back to skull, eyes sunken to red pits.

It was Wen.

She curled her lips back from her unnaturally wide mouth, flashing jagged and sharp teeth. What was left of her coronation dress was gone, the seed of the woodcurse pulsing like a heartbeat in her neck. Thorns prickled out from her flesh like splinters, covering her torso, as a long ridge of briars swirled down from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. Black roots shifted just beneath her skin and broke out in places where her flesh had been cut or stripped or burst, weaving down along her arms and legs like strange braids of armor. She crouched, her long black tongue slithering hungrily over her teeth.

There was nothing left of my best friend. Nothing at all.

Anwen opened her terrifying mouth and lunged. I pushed myself off the cell bars and ducked beneath her as she crashed against them. Seren leaped back, hiding himself in the dark corner of his cell. A candle tumbled out of a sconce, spraying orange embers across the ground.

Wen let out a low, guttural growl and turned to me. I grabbed the sconce and went to slice open my palm.

“No!” Seren cried, making me pause. “She won’t turn back. The curse runs too deep.”

“Then how come you did? And Fox?”

“Because that idiot wasn’t fully turned yet, and I was basically a corpse puppet until you stuck these in me.” He wiggled his shoulder covered in flowers. “Now I’m a walking terrarium!”

“You’re telling me my blood won’t do anything to her?”

“I’m telling you she’s going to die. Like the ancient by the river.”

Anwen slowly stood again, baring her terrifying teeth. She gnashed them hungrily. The sconce shook in my palm. He had to be lying—he must not want me to cure Anwen yet. He wanted to use her. But . . . he wasn’t woodcursed anymore. He couldn’t command bone-eaters. And he could only know about the ancient by the river if he had seen it, but if he had been tracking us for that long, then why hadn’t he sprung a trap?

And before that, in the cottage. I knew he had seen me, but he didn’t sic the bone-eaters after us then. . . .

I didn’t know what to think of Seren anymore.

“I carried a lot of anger with me for a long time, Cerys,” he said, as if he could sense the question in my mind. “The wood used it to control me after I died. But I’m not evil.”

Wen gave another howl and lunged again, smashing into the wall I had been leaning against a second before, her claws sinking into the stone like it was putty. She flicked out her black tongue.

“Cccccerrrysssss,” she hissed.

I dropped the sconce and stumbled back into a corner. I had trapped myself. The bone-eater seemed to relish my horror. Her lips drew back from her terrifying teeth again, and she shrieked.

In it I could hear words—her words. “You abandoned me!”

I froze.

“You left!”

She took a step closer. Then another.

“You ran!”

She was so close now; I could smell the wood rot on her—as fresh as it had been on the ancient. The scent of rot and fresh spring grass together in a revolting concoction I remembered too well from when my mother came back. When she tried to kill me. The look in Anwen’s eyes was the same as the look in my mother’s. I could see the holes in her skin where centipedes crawled, from one tunnel to another, as if she was hollow on the inside.

There was nothing I could use in this prison to help me. In the forest, everything was ripe for my blood—but here, there were only stones and dampness. There was nothing.

The curse would claim me after all.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang. Wen jerked toward the sound, a snarl ripping at her throat.

Seren slammed against the cell bars again. “Forget about me?” he called.

The bone-eater lowered herself down on all fours and prowled toward him.

“Run!” he cried to me. “Get out of here—take the crown and leave!”

What in kingsteeth was he doing? I couldn’t tell whose side he was on anymore, what he was trying to do. But I didn’t have time to think about it. Now was my chance to leave while he had her distracted. I turned, ready to bolt up the stairs, but—

No. I couldn’t.

“Seren,” the bone-eater hissed. Instead of drawing back from the cell door, he threw it wide. The prison keys fell out of the lock and clattered onto the floor.

“I’m here,” he replied quietly. Like he had all those years ago, when Wen and the prince had once been his charges. I turned toward them both, drawing the iron knife out of my pocket. I had kept it close since we’d arrived in Voryn. It wouldn’t kill a bone-eater—but it didn’t need to.

I wouldn’t leave him again. If I had promised myself anything, it was that. No one was left. No one was forgotten.

Not again.

“I’m here,” he repeated as Anwen eased into his cell and picked herself up onto two legs.

I was quiet until the last possible moment as I crept toward the cell, my breath painfully loud in my ears. Then I raised my iron blade. I struck, sinking it deep into her back. She gave a cry and tried to grab for me, but I’d already let go of the knife. She screeched, trying to grab it out of her back, stumbling farther into the cell.

I didn’t waste time. I grabbed Seren by the arm and pulled him out of the cell with me, then slammed the door closed, trapping her inside.

36

The Shadows of the Heart

Fox

THE ANCIENTS HAD breached the gates, and the guards were barricading the fortress doors, not that it would stop them. Nothing would. Moss had found its way underneath the door, spreading across the marble floor, and with it came the Wilds. The ancients would find their way in however they could, no matter what the Grandmaster did to stop them. I sneaked out through a side gate that a bone-eater had broken through. The sooner I got out of here, the better off I’d be.