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She hadn’t had the heart for it. She’d only had the heart for stumbling into Orelia’s room and falling to her knees at Orelia’s bedside.

But none of that mattered. She wasn’t any stronger than the Fetterwitch after all. The Break would never stop widening. The world would never stop shaking. Celestyna was beginning to think that, maybe, that was what the Vale deserved.

Whatshedeserved.

She pressed her flaming cheek against the cool silk of Orelia’s skirt and tried to order her thoughts. On Orelia’s bedside table lay a collection of stories written before the breaking of the Vale—stories of witches, and magic, and the great beasts of the Old Wild that had made the mountains and carved out the rivers and coaxed the forests from the ground. She and Orelia had read the stories so many times that their fingers had worn the leather binding soft. They now had to turn the pages slowly, as if cleaning the feathers of a baby bird they didn’t want to wake.

Help us,thought Celestyna, reaching for the Old Wild.Help me.How many times she’d tried to find it over the years, she could not count. But maybe, with this ripe old witch’s curse brewing inside her...

She held her breath, searching through the curse for the Old Wild she knew existed at its core. Without the Old Wild, magic could not exist. And the curse was magic, so the Old Wild lay buried deep inside it.

Like trying to recall a memory, Celestyna searched, and stretched her mind, and reached.

But all she found were shadows. A sharp pain pulsing from her tired joints to her pinched belly and back again. A quiet stewing anger that shook like the castle in which she had been born.

If any scrap of the Old Wild did now live inside her, it had nothing to say. All she could hear were the rushing whispers of the curse poisoning her blood.

Strengthening your blood,the curse hissed.

Tears trembled on Celestyna’s lashes. They were running out of time.

I’mrunning out of time,she thought.

Master of the Realm indeed.

She was master of nothing, and she was rotting from the inside out.

Orelia stroked Celestyna’s hair. “Tell me what happened, Tyna. Say something. Please?”

Celestyna barely managed the words. “I threw a girl down into the Break. I threw her to her death.”

Orelia’s fingers paused.

Celestyna’s gut clenched. Would Orelia run from her now? Would she shove her away in disgust?

But Orelia simply asked, “Why?”

“She was going to tell my soldiers the truth about what I’ve done.”

“Will you tell me, Tyna?” Orelia cautiously resumed stroking Celestyna’s hair. “Maybe that will make you feel better.”

Celestyna let out a tired puff of laughter. “Doubtful.”

Through her every vein, the curse stretched and crawled. Celestyna tried to clamp down on the sensation, but the curse was too slippery, too cunning.

Orelia sounded terribly sad. “You’re sick, aren’t you? Just like Mama and Papa were.”

At Orelia’s words, a match struck inside Celestyna’s mind. A spark of an idea. As soon as she thought it, a tingling wave of fear flooded her.

The curse hissed in her chest, delighted.Yes, tell her. Then bring her a knife. You know you want to.

Celestyna drew in a shaky breath. “I have to tell you a story, Orelia, and you won’t like it.”

Orelia said nothing for a moment. Then, fearfully, “All right...”

“Mama and Papa didn’t die of fever,” Celestyna began. “They did get very sick, but because of a curse. It’s anchored in our family’s blood, and has been for generations. There was a witch—the Fetterwitch, was her name—and she carried much of the curse in her own body. She needed our blood to help, to give it power. But she was growing old, and the curse wasn’t working as it should have.”

“What kind of curse is it?” Orelia asked.