I knew the Wilds too well. I remembered the Wilds too well.

I remembered everything now. Though I wished I didn’t.

The wood was dark and smelled like freshly upturned earth, and I took a deep breath. I wasn’t one for fighting, anyway. I just had to ignore the screams of Voryn, ignore the fact that Daisy was still in there, somewhere.

I would only make things worse. I was a coward, a danger to everyone I cared about. She was better off without me. Tugging at the pack on my shoulder, I glanced behind me one last time, seeing only the top of the spoiled cake that was Voryn, when I heard a snarl in front of me—

And came face-to-face with an angry gray bear.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Uh, hello there . . . friend?”

Vala pulled back her lips to show me her very nice, very sharp teeth. I took a step back. No friend of mine.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” I began, “but it’s not—”

She snarled. You left her.

“It’s not like that.”

You left her, the bear repeated. She looked very angry, and that anger was directed at me, obviously for a multitude of reasons. You left her, and you are running away.

I set my jaw. “What else am I supposed to do? And if you care so much, why aren’t you in there helping her?” I stepped around her to keep on my forward trajectory out of imminent danger. “You go be her hero, bear. I can’t,” I said over my shoulder. “I don’t deserve it.”

She doesn’t need a hero, Lorne.

The sound of that name again stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t heard it in so many years; that life felt like an odd half dream I’d almost lived.

She needs people who believe that she can be the hero.

“I’m not that person.”

Aren’t you?

I curled my fingers tightly into a fist. The wood had held the memory of what I’d done for eight years, and for eight years I’d evaded it by not being me. Prince Lorne died—he deserved nothing else. I deserved nothing else. I could still hear Seren screaming, and the ancient as it prowled around the hollowed-out log, and the sound of my fearful sobs in my throat, and I didn’t want to remember.

For years I had been oblivious. I hadn’t cared. I hadn’t known. I had watched Daisy live with the trauma of her memory, crying in the quiet of her room, missing her mother and . . . and me. And I had been right there the whole time.

I had been there, but gone. Because I had wanted to go.

I hurt her so badly that it hurt me in a place I didn’t know heartache could reach. I wanted to rip my heart out, I wanted to tear away my flesh, and I wanted to forget again. Things were so much easier, so much less painful, when I was forgotten, when I had forgot.

I couldn’t save anyone—not Seren, not my sister.

Not even Daisy.

But . . .

I did not lead you and the briar daughter here so that you could run away, Vala said, her fur bristling. I led her here to save us. And I led you here to help her.

There was a noise in the underbrush, and I ducked behind a tree and waited for whatever it was to pass. Vala hunkered down next to me. It sounded lighter than most ancients, so I peeked around the trunk of the tree to get a better look.

I wished I hadn’t. The bone-eater that was once a man was deathly pale, his gray hair matted with twigs and dirt, his clothes in shreds. A centipede crawled out of his ear and dived into a hole in his cheek. Even woodcursed, I recognized him. I recognized him because he looked so much like Daisy. He paused, as if he could sense me, and turned his head in my direction. I bristled. His eyes were gone, replaced by dark pits, red pinpricks at the center.

I quickly pulled myself behind the tree and pressed my back against it, praying he hadn’t seen me.

But he had.

I could hear him move with that that slow, prowling gait of predators. I knew it too well.

Shit. If I ran, the old man would run after me. If I was still a fox, I could slip through the underbrush and get lost, but I was too big for that, and too slow. Kingsteeth, think—

I squeezed my eyes closed.

Think, think.

Magic crackled again at my fingertips—

“Easy on the flames, son!” I heard my father laugh. We were on the training grounds aside from the barracks, two smoking dummies twenty feet in front of me. I had singed the tips of my fingers, and stuck them into my mouth to alleviate the pain. “Be gentle. Your magic is an extension of you—it can hurt you as well as help you, and if you use it all up, you’ll have nothing left for the crown.”

I gave a start. “The crown takes our magic? Why would I ever put it on, then?”

Father placed a hand on my head and said, as if it was a secret only for the two of us, “Because it’s the price we pay. The crown is alive. It needs nourishment like the rest of us, so we provide it with our magic. That’s why only we can wear the crown.”

“And if someone else does?”

“It will take them instead.” He had smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. All my life, I’d known him with circles under his eyes. He knelt down to me then, his hands tight on my shoulders. “We took something very precious from the Lady, and so we have to repay it with ourselves. A life for a life.”

A life for a life.

Oh, kingsteeth, why did his cryptic talks only make sense now? I pressed my back against the bark of the tree, relishing the thought of escaping. Of leaving. Of running as far as I could. But I couldn’t.

I licked my first two fingers, spun out from behind the tree, and snapped. A burst of flames spread in a wall across the forest floor between Daisy’s father and me. The fire was hot, first burning blue, then orange as it ate at the underbrush. The bone-eater reared back, hissing.

I didn’t stick around to figure out what he’d do. I shook my hand to put out the fire at the tip of my fingers and turned to the bear to ask the one question I had been afraid to.

“Vala, the Lady isn’t dead, is she?”

No.

“Then where did she go?”

She never left.

I took a deep breath, turned back toward the sieged city. “Okay. Then where is she?”

37

The Ties That Bind

Cerys

“YOU WERE RECKLESS,” Seren accused me as we raced up the stairs to the main floor of the fortress, rubbing his wrists where the ropes had been. “We could’ve been killed! Well, you could have been killed, but I could have been almost killed!”

“I saved you, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

“Liar!” At the top of the stairs, we took a left and headed back toward my room. “We can’t let those ancients take the crown. Stupid fox,” I added under my breath. I didn’t know where he’d gone, but I hoped wherever he was, he had a plan.

A good one.

Seren caught my hand and made me stop. “Your fox isn’t coming back. He ran last time, and he ran this time.”

I wrenched my hand out of his grip. “I know what happened by the river,” she snapped. “You need not remind me.”

“No, before that. In the wood eight years ago—”

I heard the guards before I saw them—at least a dozen, brandishing their swords before us. Seren and I backpedaled, but three more came up from behind.

We were trapped.

“I hoped I could trust you, but I was wrong,” I heard the Grandmaster say, and the guards parted for her. She wore dark leather armor and carried a sword at her waist, much like the one Petra had—no, it was Petra’s sword; I could tell from the red ribbon tied around the dragon-headed hilt.

Where was Petra?

The guards shoved us to our knees and bound our hands behind our backs with rope. I struggled against them, but they were too many. The Grandmaster inclined her head toward Seren. She had a new cut on her forehead, a nasty slice. “You are in league with the wood.”

“No—it’s not like that. He’s a friend,” I tried, but the Grandmaster made a motion, and the guards brought us to our feet again. “What are you doing? We’re trying to help!”

“And you will,” she replied. Her eyes were flat and gray. I didn’t like it at all. “Your blood cured that companion of yours—it will cure my city.”

A cold chill curled down my spine. “I don’t have enough blood for your entire city.”

The Grandmaster shook her head, and I realized just how desperate and disillusioned she was. She wanted to save her city—but this wasn’t the way to do it. The bone-eaters would keep coming, and the ancients would keep attacking until they found the crown. I struggled against the guards, but even as I did, I knew she wouldn’t listen to me.

In her mind, I was her only salvation.

My blood was.

She came up to me, her face quietly concealing rage, and curled her fingers around the crown. She untied my sash and took it. I tensed. “No, wait. You’re making a mistake—the crown isn’t—”

“Take them to the main hall,” the Grandmaster ordered, and without even a final glance she turned and left down the hall. “And bring me a sharp knife.”

38

Brave

Fox

A GROUP OF guards held Daisy and Seren in the main hall. I leaned away from the doorway and pressed my back against the wall. My hair was stuck to my neck with sweat, and I tied it up into a ponytail with a bit of thread I unraveled from the hem of my shirt. Getting into the city the second time had been a lot harder than leaving, which just felt like tragic irony. Not only had I had to combat guards who seemed intent on thinking that I was woodcursed, I’d also had to deal with bone-eaters and at least two ancients. I’d lit so many fires with my fingers that they were blackened at the tips.

Beside me, Vala gave a grunt, but it was just the normal kind and not the scolding kind.

“I’m blaming you if I die,” I told her.

She didn’t seem to mind. We took a peek around the corner, careful so that no one saw us.

The Grandmaster grabbed Daisy by the hair and shoved her to her knees. On the other side of the main hall, half a dozen guards held down one bone-eater. The monster looked newly transformed, its face not yet unhinged. There were white ribbons in its dark hair—ribbons I recognized. It was Petra.