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Thorn turned around and found Zaf. Framed by gargantuan gleaming black leaves, she looked narrow and small. She leaned against a tree, breathing thinly. The wind ruffled her frizzy white hair.

Quicksilver spoke first. “Zaf, really, we don’t need you to—”

“If it’s what Thorn wants,” Zaf said, bright blue eyes fixed on Thorn’s face, “then I’ll do it.”

As she locked eyes with Zaf, Past-Thorn cried out that Zaf couldn’t, shecouldn’t. It was awful to ask. Zaf wasn’t strong enough. And Thorn had promised: never again. No more travel by lightning. No more Zaf exhausting herself nearly to death.

But what about Brier, and her mother and father forever at war, and the ruined plains of Estar?

The Thorn of now thought cuttingly, clear-eyed, web-voiced,What good is a gentle heart, if your home is torn apart before you can save it?

Thorn’s insides roiled with impatience. She couldn’t stop the feeling. She spoke through a clenched jaw.

“If we travel home any other way,” she said, her voice clear and flat, “the Vale might be lost by the time we get there.”

The look on Zaf’s face punched Thorn in the softest part of her belly, where the web couldn’t reach.

It was obvious now. Zaf had been hoping Thorn would say, “No, never, not you, not again. Stay safe. Ipromised.”

But the moment had passed. The words had been said, the promise broken. And no one was speaking up to argue.

Zaf lifted her pointy chin in the air and said quietly, “Then I’ll do it.”

.31.

The Last Lonely Beast

Cub watched the humans from the dark.

He had forgotten how big he was. Looking at them, he remembered.

There were two: one with long brown hair tied in a knot at the back of her neck, the other with short brown hair. They wore the same gray clothes with gold buttons and blue belts, and they were sleeping.

Cub tilted his mammoth head and sniffed them. His snout quivered in the air. They were stinky, all right. Two words came into Cub’s head:man. Woman.Maybe they hadbeen climbing for a very long time, just like Cub had.

But why would humans come down into the Break? He had never seen any down here before. They stayed up above, where the sky was, and the meadows and the oceans.

Cub raised one of his scabbed front paws, clumps of clover dangling from it. He should smash these humans. He should grind them to nothing under his huge tough feet.

But he couldn’t stop looking at them. The words of his mothers floated through his thoughts on sweet tides of memory.

Neither kittens, nor humans, are to be eaten.

Did that mean they weren’t to be stomped, either?

Cub growled. He shook his great shaggy head and moaned. It was so confusing, to be Cub! His anger was brilliant inside him, but so were the things his mothers had told him.

He wasn’t sure which bright light he should follow.

As Cub blinked at the tiny humans, one of them, the man with the short brown hair, awoke. He stretched and looked up into the darkness.

He grew very still. So did Cub. He blinked and stared at the human man. He whuffed a breath out of his snout. Clumps of brittle grass dropped from his cracked lips.

The man touched the woman sleeping beside him. “Fern,wake up please. Slowly. And don’t scream.”

Light sparked at the man’s waist. The pack he wore buzzed with lightning.

Cub heard the faint screams of the trapped witches and stamped his feet.“Why?”he howled quietly.