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She shook her head. “I doubt you will be so enthusiastic when you hear what I plan to do.”

What she planned to do.Gods, I loved her mind, her scheming, her imagination; but it was a fearsome thing, too. Her brush with death days ago was proof of this.

“Mother’s been gone too long,” she said, gliding past meto pace across the plush, ornate rug. “Either something’s happened to her on the road to Le Château, or—or maybe she’s still at the palace. Maybe she fell ill. Or maybe the king thought her request to stay was so foolish, he’s thrown her in a dungeon!”

“My lady,” I said, “I’m certain everything’s—” I stopped myself, looking at her. At the anguish gleaming in her dark eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and I balled my fists to stave off the urge to brush them aside.

“Don’t tell me I’m foolish for worrying so,” Ofelia whispered. She laughed, harsh and joyless. “I’ve tried to be practical. I know it’s too dangerous for me to go after her. I know that I could be fretting over nothing. Mother could walk through the entryway any day now. But”—she shook her head, her pale hand pressed against her heart—“something is wrong. Iknowit. I—”

She could speak no more. Ofelia inhaled shakily, her lip trembling, her fists tightened, as if she could will away her tears. Each one was like an arrow piercing my ribs.

I took a step nearer, and she embraced me, the last vestiges of her resolve melting away into loud sobs. I held her in turn, so grateful, and so sorry, to have her heart pressed close to mine.

Standing there with her in my arms, as the fear and the grief weighed her body down, my choice felt clearer than ever. She waslight, laughter and kindness and curiosity andjoy, the sun itself. She did not deserve to live in a world where such monsters roamed free. Carlos did not deserve such a fate, either. No one did.

I would seek out her mother. And I would find a way to destroy these beasts.

“I’ll go,” I said.

She sniffled against my waistcoat. “What?”

“I’ll go to Le Château. I’ll find your mother.”

Ofelia lifted her eyes to mine.

Heavens.

Up close, I could count the freckles dotting her cheeks and nose, see the streaks of auburn in her dark eyebrows, watch her long lashes brush against her eyelids as she gazed wide-eyed at me. If I believed in such things, I’d think she was a changeling. Some fairy-creature and not just a person.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

All I could see was that Shadow barreling toward her, the startled scream she’d let out, and Carlos, knocked to the ground, his face white as bone as his breath was torn from his lungs—

“No!”

She startled, and I staggered back, alarmed by the ferocity of my tone. I spoke like that to the other soldiers when they were being reckless and foolish but never to her.

“I—I’m sorry, my lady,” I mumbled, keeping my gaze from hers. “I simply meant that I cannot put you in danger.It’s a few days’ journey to Le Château. I’d be traveling both day and night, traveling in the midst of Shadows. It’s not safe for you.”

Her hand slipped into mine, her soft skin making shocks zip up my arm.

“You will keep me safe,” she said. She swept her thumb back and forth against my hand. “You always have.”

“By—by the wall, my lady, you nearly—”

“You saved me then.” Her eyes became sad, then, and serious—a look that was eerily unlike her. “Lope, this is for mymother. I would walk into the Underworld itself if it meant getting her back. If you do not come with me, I’ll just go on my own. You know I will.”

She pulled back from me, wiping the tears from her eyes. “But Lo,” she whispered, that dear name making my heartstrings pull taut, “there is no one else in the world I’d want to go on this journey with. The choice is yours, but... I hope you’ll say yes.”

Deep down, a wiser side of me knew this was a terrible idea. To travel, just the two of us, all the way to Le Château, on a road where Shadows prowled... What could lie before us but peril?

The sincerity and hope in her eyes made any protest die within me. The way she spoke of it all seemed so logical, so certain. Wewouldmake it to the palace, the two of us. And besides, she was my charge. I was instructed to protect her,no matter what road she chose. All this time, this was what I had wanted. For her to depend on me, for me to be of use to her, for me to be her knight. Perhaps at the palace, we could be—

I quickly dismissed that thought.

I was not made for love or for courtship. I had been trained to be a knight. I was made for killing Shadows. So when we arrived there, she could reunite with her mother—and my search for answers about the monsters who haunted our lives could begin in earnest.

I would find their origin and destroy it; keep these creatures from entering our world ever again. No more children would die at the hands of monsters.