A laugh drew me away from my thoughts.

To the other side of the garden, where a boy with hair the color of marigolds and a smile that tugged up a little too much on one side, tricky and daring, laughed with a crowd of dignitaries. They fawned over him the longer he talked. He was very good at talking. He could make you fall in love with him with a single word.

Everyone said the newly returned crown prince of Aloriya was handsome.

He was—don’t get me wrong—but he also had a stomach the size of an endless pit, made terrible puns, fled at the first sign of trouble, and if you gave him a choice between eating meat pie and ruling a kingdom, he’d choose the meat pie.

And I think I loved those things about him the most.

“Well, he looks quite content with himself,” said a monotonous voice to my left, and I jumped, spilling my wine all over the front of my dress.

Seren leaned in the archway, his arms folded, feet crossed.

“Kingsteeth, don’t sneak up on me like that!” I mumbled, frowning down at the growing stain over my chest. “Elderberry wine is almost impossible to get out, you know.”

“Sorry,” he replied, sounding earnest. He was in dark leather armor, although on the left side of his chest, bits of strange star-shaped buds sprouted up through his collar. The dark circles under his eyes were, somehow, impossibly deeper, and his hair was washed and neatly combed back, pinned at the base of his neck with a twist of briars. He eyed me suspiciously. “Why are you over here alone? And not—say—dancing with your prince?”

“Well, I’m not alone if you’re here,” I replied smartly.

“Mmh.”

“Why don’t you join the celebration?”

“Anwen asked, but . . .” He motioned to himself. “I doubt anyone would really like a corpse waltzing around her coronation. Especially the seneschal. You know how she is. Besides, I have a job to do, and I shouldn’t stay long.”

“From the Lady?”

“Who else? And that bothersome bear is waiting at the edge of the wood. I suppose she’ll track me down if I don’t return soon,” he added with a sigh.

After I’d broken the curse and freed the Lady of the Wood, she had appointed him her liaison between the world of humans and the heart of the wood for eight years—the amount of time he had been under the control of the woodcurse. For eight years he would be her servant, and afterward . . . well, he didn’t know. None of them did. “But quite honestly,” he had added when we first discussed his predicament back in the winter, “I would rather be this than dead, which was the other option.”

I really didn’t want Seren dead either, though it was only the magic of the wood that kept him alive. But maybe in eight years we would be ready to say goodbye, and he would be ready to go. Eight years was a long time, though it didn’t seem long at all.

Seren watched the dance for another song and then turned to leave.

“Aren’t you going to at least stay to congratulate her?” I asked.

He inclined his head. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to jinx anything.” Then he ducked through the frozen honeysuckle vines and disappeared into the darkened line of trees, where a silver bear waited, her bones stitched together with ivy and honeysuckle vines.

Cryptic undead men were the worst.

I frowned down at the elderberry wine stain on the front of my dress, my dread growing because the more I scrubbed at the stain, the worse it got.

Seneschal Weiss was going to kill me.

As I licked my fingertips to try to perhaps scrub out the stain, a familiar voice asked, “So he’s gone already?”

I jumped, startled. “Oh—Wen. Hi.”

She was flanked by two bodyguards who kept an amiable distance. I’m sure the seneschal had told them to stay on Wen all evening, especially after the last coronation. The daisy crown I’d made fit her head a lot better than any golden crown ever would. Wen glanced behind me to where Seren had been a few moments before, a frown curling across her soft pink lips. “He could have stayed,” she added a little softer.

“I think he still feels guilty about—you know. Disrupting your last coronation.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Yes, well, I’m sure we would’ve had a lot to talk about.”

“With that corpse? He really hasn’t changed much. Still the same tall, broody, smart-mouthed—”

“I still feel it sometimes.” She lifted her eyes toward the wood beyond the wall, and I noticed her hands curling into fists.

“The woodcurse?” I asked in alarm.

“No—yes? No,” she finally decided, and her fair eyes drifted toward the golden lights and the merriment and the music, as if they were on the other side of endless chasm. “It’s different. Similar, but not quite the same. It’s this itch that I can’t scratch. Under my skin. This part of me that . . . that remembers. I remember succumbing to the curse, hunting you through the wood, trying to kill you. I remember feeling lost and broken and alone. I was so hungry and alone, and after a while I just . . . gave in to that. But you never gave up on me. Not once.”

At that, I stepped in front of her so she could no longer see the people who didn’t understand the forest’s shadows, and I took her hands in mine and squeezed them tightly. “Anwen Sunder, you will always be my best friend. Forever.”

She pressed her forehead against mine, a silent promise between us. “Forever.”

The orchestra drifted into a softer waltz. Anwen pulled away from me, wiping a stray tear from her eye, and studied the deepening stain on my borrowed dress. “You should get that stain looked at. You know Seneschal Weiss is going to kill you if you hand it back like that.”

“Maybe if I drown myself in a barrel of wine, she won’t notice the dress is a different color?”

“Yes, but then she’ll get at you for ruining the wine.”

“I will never win,” I lamented tragically, and we laughed, because even in the forest’s shadows, we were still us, and things that were different weren’t the ones that would tear us apart.

“Gossiping about Lord Aleran’s nose again?” The prince materialized out of the crowd with Petra. Somehow, they had escaped the horde of dignitaries fawning over them. I quickly crossed my arms over my chest to try to hide the wine stain. I didn’t need everyone knowing I was a disaster.

Wen raised her chin defiantly. “A queen never gossips, thank you.”

“Mm-hm, I’m sure that’s a lie.”

“Says the king of liars.”

“At your service.” He gave a mock bow and introduced the young woman beside him. “Wen, meet the Grandmaster of Voryn.”

Petra was probably the most smartly dressed at the coronation, in comfortable-looking trousers and a simple button-down shirt. Her brown skin was soft in the orange lantern light, her short hair pulled back with balm. She had a pin on her collar in the shape of Voyrn’s crest—the only signifier that she was nobility. “Your Majesty,” she greeted her with a bow, “it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person. The penmanship in your letters is excellent.”

“Wen, please! And thank you—yours is quite elegant as well.” She offered her hand, but Petra, instead of shaking it, brought Wen’s hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles. A blush quickly crawled across Wen’s cheeks.

“I believe I promised you a dance in the letters,” Petra said, not letting go.

Wen’s eyes widened. “Oh—oh yes. And to discuss the treatries between Voryn and Aloriya, I believe.”

“Why not both?”

As Petra pulled her toward the dance, Wen gave her brother a skeptical look, but he simply shrugged and she let Petra pull her out onto the dance floor. We waited until they were far enough away before I accused him, “You knew that would happen.”

Lorne was trying very hard not to look too proud of himself. “Call it my animal instincts.” Then he dug for a kerchief in his waistcoat and presented it to me. “I would invest in pockets if I were you.”

“This is your sister’s dress,” I replied, irritated that he’d noticed the stain, and took the kerchief to scrub at the spot. “I’m just borrowing it.”

“I would keep it.”

“Because I ruined it?”

“Because it looks impossibly beautiful on you,” he replied with a grin. Tonight, he wore a bright blue jacket and dark trousers, and a circlet of daisies on his head. He’d cut his hair, and it was short, a strange orange-gold that wasn’t quite one or the other anymore, now a little wild and unkempt no matter how much he tried to tame it. “Rose may even be my favorite color now.”

I gasped to hide my blush and handed the kerchief back. “Prince Lorne giving the gardener’s daughter a compliment? Oh, scandelous!”

His face pinched as he slid the kerchief into his pocket again. “Ugh, please don’t. You know I hate that name.”

“It’s a good name.”

“But it’s not me.”

No, it really wasn’t. “Prince Lorne” reminded me of a timid boy who disappeared into the wood, chasing after a sound that was never there. He certainly wasn’t a boy anymore, or remotely timid, and he never chased things if he didn’t have to. And when he did, he didn’t cower like that boy in the wood so long ago, or the fox he became. The wood changed us, but perhaps it changed him most of all.

I offered my hand to him. “Fox,” I addressed him, and his eyebrows shot up at the name, “would you care to dance?”

A smile stretched across his lips. “Why, Daisy, I think that would ‘break protocol,’” he said, mocking Seneschal Weiss’s sharp accent. He slipped his hand into mine. “So of course I’d love to. I am a fantastic dance partner.”

“Because you’re dancing with me,” I teased, and led him out into the middle of the royal garden, where all the people I had known my entire life danced and sang and laughed. Where Wen was falling for the Grandmaster of Voryn, and my father was recounting the Great Pig Race of the Summerside Year—again—by the wine barrels. The music was bright and happy, and Fox gathered my hand in his and placed my other hand on his waist, and we followed into the dance, swept away in the happiness of it all.