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“What doyouwant?” she countered. “Do you want to stay here forever? To be the beast of Harrow and dwell among its bones?”

“I will not be cut apart again,” I said, and rushed away from her. I plunged beneath the surface of the lake, assembling strange carapaces in the silt. I waited for her to leave.

She didn’t.

“I won’t go back to what I was,” I said, sitting beside her beneath an old oak tree.“I won’t be cut off from myself.”

“You don’t have to. That’s what healing means,” Bryony said. “Helen was wounded. But she wasn’t her wounds. You can be yourself and be Helen if you want to. It’s your choice. You’d have Harrow, but you wouldn’t be stuck here. You could go anywhere you want.”

“What if I don’t?” I whispered.“What if I can’t?”

“Then I will love you,” she said. “And I will mourn her.”

Helen. Collector of bones. Rachel’s daughter. The girl whose heart beat harder because Bryony Locke was holding her.

But for that to be true, she needed a heart.

I ran from the witch again. I delved deep to where I had hollowed out a cathedral of roots and stones beneath the earth. The shattered Harrow stone lay at its center, all my once-stolen bones interred at its feet.

In that place where I had been scattered so many times, I tried to remember being me.

I built myself from shadows and stars, from memory and hope. Hands that had gathered bones and bound them in wire, the chambers of a heart that had been shattered and had healed again.Lungs to draw in breath, a throat to speak the name of the woman I loved. But this time, I didn’t close any part of myself away. I did not cut into my soul to lessen myself to fit within this form. I could still feel Harrow, all of it. I was still the stars.

The spiral was long since collapsed. I had to carve myself a new path, the part of me that was Harrow opening a seam in the earth for the part of me that was Helen to walk through. I cut a straight line through where the spiral once had lain. A clear course from the center to its edge.

At its end, she was waiting for me.

“Rabbit?” Bryony asked tentatively. “Is that you?”

I stepped forward into the light of strange stars. “It’s me,” I said, and for the first time since Mary Beaumont had looked at the face of a god, it was true.

I would love Bryony Locke in any form, but it was Helen who laughed with joy and threw herself into Bryony’s arms. I kissed her and tasted tears and I didn’t know which one of us was crying, and it didn’t matter.

She was here, and so was I, and we were together, and we were alive, and the whole of me, every part of my soul, was free.

THIS IS HARROW:A house lies, silent and ruined, in the cleft between wooded hills. The forest rushes toward it and over it, clambering in mad abandon across the toppled stones and cracked beams. The roots have infiltrated the foundations, the branches thrust through shattered windows, and flowers grow out of season amid flurries of ash.

A wondrous chaos breathes amid the stones of Harrow. Lithe creatures dart among the trees, unfamiliar bird calls trill, and plants that have no earthly origin bloom. Above this riot of strange creations, the stars gleam in ever-changing configurations in the sky.

In a small cottage in the woods dwells a witch. She tends a summer garden and reads in the shade of the trees. And I dwell with her.

Someday we will walk beyond the gates of Harrow. We will live in both worlds, and both will change us. We cannot be certain who we will choose to be in the coming days and months and years, what lives we will build for ourselves. But we will always be together.

I have lied all my life, in one way or another, but now I can speak the truth.

I was born at Harrowstone Hall, and I was reborn in its ruins. I am not human, but I am whole. I am free. And I am loved.

My name is Helen Vaughan.