Page 8

Thanks to her, I had learned to wield a new weapon. I learned the beauty and the magic of words, the power in collecting them, piecing them together. My journal was filled with ink, with broken lines and words and phrases that could sometimes be stitched together into a poem. I shared with Ofelia only those that I was truly proud of. Little shards of beauty that I had gathered: a description or a couplet. She would marvel at my words like I was something great, and my heart would flutter in my chest like it had grown wings.

Carlos was the only other person who had coaxed me into sharing my poems. From the day we met, he had teased me like the other soldiers had for having my head in the clouds, but once I read that first poem to him, he smiled at me and called me an artist, and he meant it.

I sighed and set aside the paper. Evenwritingmade me ache.

I granted myself one luxury to placate my writhing heart. A sweet daydream I often turned to, letting it rest within me like capturing a firefly within the cage of my hands. I imagined myself on horseback with Ofelia’s arms around me, and we would ride off, the two of us, to someplace better. To aplace with no monsters. Where she would be safe, and I could write poems. Where I wouldn’t have to fight anymore.

Where I wouldn’t have to watch a friend die. Where death didn’t exist at all.

It was all so clear: her reddish curls streaming in the wind, the rose-petal perfume of her, her soft cheek against my neck—

I pushed away from my desk, breathing out, letting the firefly-dream drift away.

This world was different. This world was full of Shadows. This world decided that one girl was born the daughter of a countess and another was born to fight monsters. A world in which children lost their parents, where children sought freedom and revenge by learning to fight; a world in which death was calledthe noble final sacrifice of every knight.

I swept up the notes I’d kept on the desk, where I had recounted the movements of these monsters for the past few weeks.

July 4—From the northeast. Thirty Shadows.

July 5—From the north. Thirty-one Shadows.

July 6—From the north. Twenty-seven Shadows.

July 7—From the east. Forty Shadows.

I swore and stood up from the desk and began pacing. Forty. There’d been forty, and Carlos had been by my side, and I’d cut down the beasts, one and then two, and then I felthis scream ripping through me.

I gripped the bedpost to steady myself as sorrow clenched around my heart like an ice-cold fist.

We were so helpless. We’d known nothing of these creatures when they first appeared, and we knew even less now. They had begun to appear only around thirty years ago, and never in such numbers. How could it be? How could anyone have ever lived in a world where monsters only existed in fairy tales?

Desperate and enshrouded in a fog of anger and misery, I stumbled back to the table and unrolled a map of the kingdom. I muttered prayers of supplication and marked with my quill the number and the direction of the monsters in the past thirty days. North and east. Always, always north and east.

Perhaps they fled to the sea? Or hid away in the forests? My fingers traced northeast, through a forest, through a town, up to the coast—but no, there was something more significant before that. On that path was another landmark, its name written in beautiful, curling text.Le Château Enchanté.

There are no monsters at Le Château, the countess had said.

And yet they always seemed to make their way there. And yet Her Ladyship hadn’t returned.

Was this claim about the safety of the palace another fairy tale? A story the king wove to sate his anxious people?

Someone rapped their fist against my door, making mejump and grasp the penknife resting beside the candle.

“Lope?” Ofelia’s voice was soft and sweet with a small, frightened quiver to it.

My heart nearly leapt out of my breast.

The knife clattered on the desk as I set it aside and scrambled to unlock the door. This was the exact reason she had asked me to sleep in the house and not in the barracks. So I could keep watch over her in her mother’s absence and for nights like these, when she was fitful and needed solace.

She stood in the doorway, a ray of starlight dressed in a pure white shift. Her eyes were the very color of the dark walnut of her jewelry box. Upon seeing her—the freckles peppered generously across her rosy cheeks, the way her auburn hair was hanging in loose, riotous curls before bed—I had to suppress a moonstruck grin.

“May I come in?” she asked.

I stepped aside, and in an instant, she whirled into the bedroom, shutting the door. Fear was written in her eyes.

“I need your help,” she said.

At this hour? My brows rose. “Anything, my lady.”