“You will change her back,” snapped the Grandmaster to Daisy, and she winced as the bone-eater snapped and pulled against its chains. The city was under siege, and this old woman thought that she could bleed Daisy dry and save her people one by one. She was desperate, and that had made her dangerous.

The bone-eater snapped at Daisy, and she flinched away.

“Save her!” the Grandmaster commanded, as if that were how it worked. “Save her. I know you can.”

“I—I can’t. If the bone-eaters are already fully turned, I’ll kill them—”

“Lies!” the Grandmaster snapped, and grabbed a chunk of her hair. She shoved Daisy closer to the bone-eater. “She isn’t gone yet!”

Oh, but Petra was. She was all teeth and claws and hunger. It had taken her faster than it had me—probably because I had been under the protection of the wood; but Petra had no such shields. The seed had burrowed into her skin and dug through her muscles and sinew, and her eyes were pitch-black with red dots—like pinpoints of light. They flicked toward Daisy, and then to the Grandmaster, as the creature gnashed its jagged teeth.

“I’ll kill her!” Daisy cried, pushing back against the woman. “I don’t want to—I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“Fine,” said the Grandmaster, releasing her, and moved back behind Seren. She took him by his hair and forced his head back, pressing the blade of her sword against his throat. “Then if you don’t help her, I’ll kill your friend.”

Seren sighed at the turn of events and looked over at the Grandmaster dolefully. The blade sank a little deeper into his throat flesh. “Oh, please, end my misery if you can.”

The Grandmaster jerked her blade back, startled. “What are you?”

“A nightmare,” replied the corpse.

I curled my fingers into fists. If I went charging in there, there was no way I would come out unscathed—but maybe that was the point.

“Bear, I’ve got an idea,” I said hesitantly, leaning in to whisper into Vala’s ear as I told her the plan. She harrumphed in agreement and said, I will assist you. Be careful.

“What’s careful to a fox?” I asked, flashing her a grin, though I didn’t feel very confident at all—I was frightened out of my wits, so much so that I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking.

It was my turn to choose now: Daisy or the Wilds.

But to be honest, I’d made that choice a long time ago.

As the bone-eater snapped at Cerys again, taking bits of her hair in its mouth, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, remembering that day in the wood years ago when I had chosen to hide.

I couldn’t rewrite the past, but I could, perhaps, amend it.

I licked my fingers so I wouldn’t burn them again, then spun out from behind the entrance to the great hall and snapped them. “I’m sorry,” I said loudly as the roaring fire curled through the hall, splitting the guards from the rest of us, “but I believe that crown is mine.”

The Grandmaster shielded her face from my flames. “You.”

“Me,” I agreed above the roar of my flames. “Let Daisy go and give me the crown, or I’ll roast all your guards.”

“But the fire . . .” She watched the flames crawl through the great hall like a snake weaving through the tall grass as realization dawned on her. “You—you’re bloodkin to the old king.”

Daisy stared at me as if she had never seen me before. “. . . Fox?”

My gaze flicked to her, and I wished I could say everything that I wanted—that I was sorry I had been such a fool. I was sorry for leaving. I was sorry for being a coward. I was sorry for causing her so much pain, and hurt, and terror. I was sorry for forgetting who I was.

I was the boy who had run into the wood, and everyone else had only followed. If I had never gone in, Daisy’s mother would be alive. Seren would be alive.

And I . . . I would never have had to put such a terrible burden on my sister.

The Grandmaster was never going to hand over the crown willingly. She was never going to let Daisy go. I knew that because I knew people like the Grandmaster, and I knew how the crown called. It screeched, it cried, it begged to be placed onto the brow of some unsuspecting prey. It promised what none of us could resist in a world where curses lurked in the wood and where power turned us against one another: safety. We would do anything for it. The Grandmaster was no different. I knew that even before she sneered at me and began to lift the crown above her.

And that’s why my plan was not about getting her to hand over the crown. I just wanted her to look at me long enough for Vala to sneak by.

I braced myself.

The Grandmaster placed the crown on her head.

A wave of magic rippled from the old woman. Her bones cracked, straightening, her chin was raised high, and she began to scream. She screamed like Daisy had screamed, like Seren, loud and terrifying and painful. She clawed at her skin and jerked, and for a moment I think she realized her folly, but by then it was too late. And when she opened her eyes, they were no eyes at all, but sockets of burning gold, as if she were burning from the inside out.

“I see what you truly are, blood of Sunder,” the Grandmaster intoned in a voice that was hers and the sound of trees swaying in a gentle breeze, “and I was mistaken. You are no monster.”

Then she raised her finger and pointed it at me. I couldn’t move.

“You are a cowardly little thing.”

Magic crackled across my skin, curling up my arms, around my shoulders, over my chest and face, and the feeling was familiar, like getting lost in a long sleep. No! Panic raced through me as I tried to push the magic from me, hold on to myself. I had to. But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, I—

I didn’t.

Fur sprouted from my skin, my fingers curling into paws, teeth lengthening.

The last I remembered, I thought about all the things I would never get a chance to do with Daisy, and it was a well of sorrow so deep I couldn’t see the bottom—and then that sorrow vanished, too.

One moment I was there. And then I was gone again, and all that remained was a fox burrowed in human clothes.

39

All That Once Was Lost

Cerys

“FOX!” I CRIED in horror.

The fire he had unleashed across the hall flickered to embers, and then to smoke as they disappeared, too. The guards raced through the wall of smoke, only to see their Grandmaster possessed by the crown. Her skin cracked around her eyes, peeling away to red muscle and bone. Her hair burned at the ends. Her tongue blackened in her mouth.

She was there, but she was no longer alive, as if the crown had drawn all the life out of her and run her dry.

It was truly a horrifying sight.

The next thing I knew, a roar shattered the quiet, and Vala pounced on the bone-eater that was once Petra and threw her like a rag doll clear across the hall.

“Kill the bear,” the Grandmaster commanded in a terrible crackling voice. She raised her hand again. The ground shook, and roots burst up from beneath the stones, swirling toward us with the intent to stab us through.

The bear faced the Grandmaster, teeth bared in a vicious snarl, and before I could stop her, she charged. “Vala! No!” Vala caught the roots in her mouth, tore them up from the floor, and tossed them back toward the Grandmaster, barring the way—making herself a shield for us.

Then Seren cried out in surprise, and I felt something nibbling at my wrists. I glanced back and—there was a fox, chewing through the ropes that bound me. The fur on one of his paws was in a jagged line, as though there was a scar underneath.

I recognized the creature with a tinge of heartache. “Fox.”

He gnawed his way through the first binding and began to claw and scrape against the second, his tail flicking agitatedly. He finished with my bonds and then went over to free Seren as I began to unwind the bandage on my hand, glancing back up to find that Vala had fought her way through the onslaught of roots and vines and lunged for the Grandmaster.

The bear took a hold of her by the arm and pulled—a full-body pull. The force rippled through her body. It should’ve been enough to cleave the arm off the old woman, but the Grandmaster barely budged. She pressed her hand to Vala’s face, and the bear let go with a roar, her fur singed in the shape of a handprint.

“We have to help her,” I said as I tried to get to my feet, but Seren caught me and pulled me back.

“I don’t think we can,” he replied softly.

I didn’t understand—until I saw the jagged roots curling up around Vala and the Grandmaster like a den of briars, long and sharp like spears.

My heart sank.

Vala snarled, spittle drippling from her maw, and attacked again, this time sinking her teeth into the Grandmaster’s shoulder, and the force tilted her crown sideways, making it slide off her head—

The roots shot inward, closing like a massive foot trap, impaling Vala through the middle a dozen times over.

“NO!” I screamed, wrenching my arm from Seren as I hurried over to the bear. Blood pooled around her, running in rivulets down the roots. Too much blood. I tried to pry her out of the trap, to pull the roots away, but she was already gone. Her blood soaked into my trousers; her skin was warm but her heart had stopped. Hot tears burned in my eyes as I turned to the Grandmaster, hollowed and wanting. “You didn’t have to kill her!”

“The crown. Where is the crown?” the woman asked feebly. Her gray hair was singed and smoking, her eyes darkened to black pits. “Where is it? Where?!”

The crown had toppled off the Grandmaster’s head and now sat where it had rolled, in the center of the great hall.

That’s when there was a pounding on the door. Two loud knocks, and then the discreet, soft sound of scratching. Like teeth against wood. From between the cracks in the door wormed vines, and they burst through, swirling up over the door, and wrenched it open.

I stared as the bone-eater that was Anwen came in.

She had escaped the prison, but it must have cost her dearly. She was no longer recognizable at all; her face was still torn from a too-wide mouth inset with jagged teeth, but now antlers curved up from her scalp, twining with chains of poison flowers. And every inch of her looked like it was rotting. As she came in, her footsteps left black mold in her wake, and it spread across the floor like ink spilled on a tablecloth.