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The Old Wild did not answer.

So,Cub thought, once he had listened to the Old Wild’s story.So, this is the truth.

Those First Ones, those seven witches of the eastern Star Lands, had gone to war and now were dead.

But their war had come to the Vale—that fire in the sky, those angry colors that ripped through the clouds and split the land in two. That war had ruined the tender green home Cub had loved, and trapped the witches of the Vale in bolts of lightning. That war had taken away his mothers.

And now... now what?

Cub, at last, pushed himself to his feet.

Now,Cub thought,I will go home.

“War,” he said.

His voice carried through the deep seams of the earth intowhich he had fallen. It rumbled all the way up to the mountains of the Vale. There, Queen Celestyna the Sixth woke up sweating in her castle. With the sound of thunder in her ears, she rushed to her window to look down, down, down at the chasm now known as the Break.

“War,” growled Cub to himself, far below, “and witches.”

He would make the Vale fit for the Old Wild once more.

And he would let no witches set foot in his home. Not again. Notever.

He looked up into the endless darkness and began to climb.

.12.

The Witches, Gone and Blazing

Thorn waited for Zaf to say something else.

Maybe Zaf would say that the awful story she had just told had been a joke. Maybe Zaf had hit her head when she broke free of her lightning bolt, so her mind couldn’t be trusted.

But Zaf simply watched Thorn, a quiet sadness on her face, until Bartos broke the silence.

“That can’t be true,” came his voice, shaky and thin. “If that’s true, then...”

“Then for generations, your queen and her family havebeen killing me and my people to fight a monster,” Zaf snapped, glaring at him. “The metal killers you throw into the Break carry my people inside them. What did you call them?Eldisks?” Zaf’s angry eyes were bright with tears. “You’re all killers, is what you are.”

Bartos dragged his hands over his face, hiding his eyes.

“She wouldn’t,” Thorn whispered. “Queen Celestyna isn’t like that.”

Zaf scoffed. “Do you know her? Do you knowanything?”

Thorn stared at the ground, lost for words—until she thought of something, and turned to stare at Noro.

He was standing very, very still. His coat seemed suddenly dimmer and duller, but his eyes shimmered like jewels.

Thorn’s heart sank. “You knew?”

“I did,” he said quietly. “All the unicorns know. We saw it happen. The sounds the witches made when the storms caught them...”

Noro shuddered. Thorn’s throat felt very tight. She could not look at Zaf.

“When the royal family began harvesting lightning and making the eldisks,” Noro said, “the witches had been suffering for many years, trapped as they were. We thought...” Norohung his head. “We thought it would be a mercy, for them to die.”

Zaf let out a strangled, angry sound.