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There was just one piece missing from my dream.

The beautiful knight who would whisper poetry in my ear.

The girl I loved.

18

Lope

God of darkness, god of the world below,

Heed the prayer of your nameless daughter.

Look upon her with your blank eyes.

Soften the cold stone of your heart.

Answer her pleas with your still mouth.

Iscarcely slept after my argument with Ofelia. I had tossed and turned, wishing I could pull my words back, that I could give her something beautiful instead.

Shedeservedbeautiful things.

Yet the only peace offering I had for her was a single line of poetry.

I fled the bedroom quickly in the morning and spent most of the day in the library. I combed through Sagesse’s journal, comparing her rituals to speak to each god. They followed the same pattern as any my prayers: a candle, a whisper, andsomething to sacrifice. In the entry for the Shadow King, the author had simply written,He is eager to speak with me. I cannot tell if there is truth in what he says or what he promises.

The first few times, I lit the candle, I said a prayer, I burned something—a rose from His Majesty’s garden, a lock of my hair, an orange, which the tiny flame consumed with a greed that could only be supernatural—but this yielded nothing. My head ached from the attempts and my focus, and I turned my attention blearily toward the endless shelves and the dust motes drifting in the sunbeams.

Sunlight.

It didn’t make for an inviting space for the king of Shadows. This king of the beasts that had defined my life, that had left me scarred, that had killed my friend. All there was to know about Shadows was this: they craved the dark, and they craved the air in our lungs.

Then that was what I would give this god.

One by one, I closed and latched each of the tall shutters letting light seep in from the garden. Only the barest gleam shone through the cracks of the shutters, and the light of my candle glowed confident and strong on the table I’d turned into a workbench.

I sat down in front of the candle, drawing the guidebook closer to me.

Scribbled in the margins of an entry, I found another note from Sagesse:It seems the god of Shadows prefers there to bemirrors nearby when I speak to him.

I patted myself down, as if I’d somehow be carrying a hand mirror for Ofelia to adjust her hair in. Instead, I fished everything out of my coat—a handkerchief, my journal, a stub of a pencil, and Eglantine’s dagger. With a smile, I unsheathed it, watching the blade reflect the light and the pale silver of my eyes.

“I hope this’ll do,” I murmured. I placed the blade against a stack of books so that the candlelight glinted against it like a golden beam.

Then, if he was ruler of the Shadows, if he wanted my breath as they did...

When the Shadows took our breaths, they stole our lives, our stories from our bodies. I could not hand those over. But there was a way I could give him a part of myself. A bit of my heart, of my mind, my words upon a page.

From my journal I chose a poem about a summer night, one spent with Ofelia instead of on that wall. When I looked at the moon that night, it hadn’t frightened me; it hadn’t reminded me of my duty, of what the darkness brought. It had reminded me of a pearl, floating upon dark water.

It had been so very beautiful, so magical, that I had dared to share my very first poem with her.

My voice had trembled as I kept my eyes upon the page. My heart had beat so fast it ached, as if it were so frightened it wanted to flee from my ribs altogether. I hated and doubtedeach word of mine. And then, when I finished, when I finally had the courage to look up into Ofelia’s marvelous eyes, I foundjoythere.Pride.She beamed brighter than the moonlight.

You’re truly a poet, she had said. And then, even sweeter,Could you read another one?

In the present I rolled the poem into a scroll. Now it was a gift not for a girl but a god.