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WILLOW AND COLE returned to Amira’s shop bright and early the next morning.

Cole led the way, moving with the confident stride of someone who belonged, while Willow trailed half a step behind.

She’d dreamed of Serrin during the night—perfect and achingly untouchable—but also of wings.

Of something vast and green and waiting.

And now Amira was waiting, too. She looked up when they pushed through the door, her gaze sweeping over Willow. “Good. You’re ready.”

Was she? Willow wasn’t sure. Still, she allowed Amira to lead her to the corner of the room where the dried herbs hung overhead. The scrying bowl sat where it had before, already full.

Amira gestured to the stool. “Sit.”

Willow sat. She didn’t flinch when Amira took her hand and pricked her finger with the needle.

A bead of blood welled up—dark red and shiny—and Amira moved Willow’s hand over the bowl. The droplet fell, breaking the water’s surface like ink unfurling through silk. The ripples spread. The water darkened.

“Eryth,” Amira murmured. “Eryth, Eryth.”

Eryth? The word took up residence in Willow’s mind, pressing against something she almost—almost—remembered. Before she could grasp it, her thoughts unspooled, and she was falling, tumbling, flying to somewhere other .

Eryth. Of course!

Around her, the air was golden and soft. Moss spread soft as velvet, and trees stretched high. A river cut through the landscape, its surface covered with petals, as if some unseen hand had strewn them into the water as an offering.

The sky was shifting and endless, threaded through with veins of silver light. Willow breathed in and smelled rain and soil. She brushed the leaves of a low-hanging vine. They curled in pleasure at her touch.

“Look for a duskwyrm,” a voice commanded. Amira. “Do you see any duskwyrms?”

Willow heard her as if through a fog, and then, as if Amira had summoned it, an actual fog appeared, shifting and twining for several moments before settling into a solid form: a serpent as slender as a ribbon that moved like poured silk, its body leaving faint trails of gold dust in its wake.

A duskwyrm? Was that what this living jewel was called?

From the forest, more duskwyrms emerged, slipping through the undergrowth like twists of emeralds, sapphires, and garnets. They wove between roots and low ferns, their bodies scattering color like shattered glass.

One of the wyrms was smaller than the others. It lagged behind, its movements jerky rather than fluid. Frowning, Willow stepped closer. The wyrm trembled in the grass, and Willow’s breath caught. It was hurt.

She knelt and whispered, “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

The duskwyrm lifted its head. Its opalescent eyes locked with hers. She felt its plea, aching and raw.

“You’re in pain,” she murmured. She extended her hand to touch it—and an intake of breath pulled her backward as if jerked by a string.

“And your sisters?” Amira said sharply.

Amira wanted Willow to see the duskwyrms... but she didn’t want Willow helping the duskwyrms? Before Willow could follow the thought, the moss beneath her shriveled, the trees faded and fell. The wounded duskwyrm dissolved into mist.

“What of your sisters?” Amira asked again.

The scene shifted. Willow was in the backyard of her childhood home. Thick summer air clung to her skin, and fireflies blinked in the dusky sky. She was sitting across from Juniper, back on the picnic blanket, a smear of egg mucus shining on her sister’s chin.

“Juniper, you just changed the fabric of reality!” she exclaimed.

Ash spun on her heel, tossing her words over her shoulder. “Yeah, sure. By giving yourself salmonella.”

Juniper stared at Willow, wide-eyed. “Am I magic now?”

“Not quite. It doesn’t work like that,” Willow said.

Juniper frowned.

“But your eyes have been opened, and that’s really good, Juniper. Now, when magic quickens around you—and it will—you’ll see it for what it is.”

Juniper’s eyes locked with Willow’s, just as the duskwyrm’s had.

In Juniper’s pupils, Willow saw reflections of herself.

At seventeen, earnest and hopeful. At eighteen, broken, scrambling out of the Pattersons’ hot tub while Mr. Chapman called out for her to wait.

Next Willow saw herself as a middle-aged woman with gentle laugh lines.

In the final ring of Juniper’s swirling eyes, Willow saw herself as an old woman, stooped and gray.

A breath curled from Juniper’s mouth, and in the vapor, a castle with onion domes rose against the sky. Willow, dressed in royal garb, stood in front of the castle as a stranger kissed her hand.

“Can I tell Ash?” Juniper asked, her words coming to Willow from somewhere far away.

“No!” an unseen Willow said quickly. “Don’t tell Ash. Don’t ever tell Ash. The things you see, she won’t understand.”

Then Willow was back with Juniper, sitting on the picnic blanket in the setting sun.

Beneath Juniper’s T-shirt, something bloomed.

A heart—not an anatomically accurate heart but a simple childlike sketch of a heart—cracked open like an eggshell.

From within, a tiny downy chick emerged, blinking at the world.

It stretched its fragile wings, lifted its head, and flew.

“And for the record,” the Willow on the picnic blanket added, “you didn’t swallow a dead baby bird. You swallowed the promise of a bird. One day, Juniper, that promise will take flight within you.”

Only the bird wasn’t a bird but a dragon—and the dragon became Willow’s sister, Ash.

Ash stood on a brightly lit stage, shaking hands with their high school principal. Gold honor cords draped over her shoulders, medals glinting like scales beneath the stage lights.

Then at twenty, working alone in a lab. Swirling science into secrets in glass test tubes. Willow tried to call out to her, but her voice was locked up tight.

Now Ash was twenty-two, hunched over a desk in a dimly lit university library.

Stacks of books crowded her in. How to Ace the GRE.

Top-Ranked Graduate Schools (and How to Get In!).

And, baffling, a leather-bound book titled, Dragons, Darwin, and Doom: The Disquieting Link between DNA and Devolution.

Willow’s heart squeezed. Ash, studying dragons?

She reached for Ash, and the vision shifted once again.

From high above, she saw Juniper sprawled across her bed, bare feet crossed at the ankles, a cordless phone pressed to her ear. From the other end of the line, Willow heard her own voice buzzing through the static.

“Cole thinks he’s the expert on everything,” the Willow-on-the-phone was saying. “But he’s got it all wrong. And the sisters—Ruby and Brooxie—they only let me stay in their guest room so they can keep tabs on me.”

“You’re living in Lost Souls now?” Juniper asked, her brow creased with concern.

The Willow-on-the-phone didn’t pause. Her voice was rushed, breathless, full of certainty. “Amira, though. Have I told you about Amira? She’s incredible. Cole and the sisters don’t understand how much good she’s doing. For Hemridge. For all of us.”

She laughed, almost giddy. “The loss of a child... the loan of a child... in exchange for peace and prosperity? How can they not see that it’s more than a fair trade?”

Watching the vision as a spectator, Willow felt ill. Juniper must have sensed the falseness of phone-Willow’s words as well because she scrunched her nose skeptically.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said uncomfortably. “And also? You sound like you’ve joined a cult.”

“What? No!” Willow-on-the-phone protested. “Amira is teaching me so much. Like, do you know about sprites? And changelings? And how powerful it is when a human child is transported to Eryth?”

Willow—the real Willow sitting in Amira’s glimmer-strange house—felt a sizzle in her brain. “Eryth,” she whispered.

With that, she fell back into herself with a jolt. The world around her reassembled. The dim glow of candlelight, the scent of books and herbs, Cole’s reassuring presence.

She pressed a hand to her chest, her heart thumping wildly. How much time had passed? Hours? Days? The visions had been so vivid, so consuming... although already, certain details were slipping away.

“You fell very far,” Amira observed.

Too far. Willow reached for Cole’s hand, needing him to ground her. His palm was rough and warm and reassuring. He stepped closer to the chair she sat in, like a sentinel standing guard.

Annoyance flashed over Amira’s features, though she masked it quickly. Her gaze bored into Willow. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Willow shook her head in confusion. Her brain was nothing but cotton candy. She squeezed Cole’s hand, then let go. She stared at her upturned palms. She flipped them over and frowned.

“Was I here all along?” she asked. “But if I was here and not elsewhere... Did none of it happen?”

“None of what?” Amira asked.

The hunger in her tone set off warning bells, pulling Willow farther out of her trance state and more firmly back into reality.

“I saw my sisters,” she said. She watched Amira’s face. “You told me to.”

“Did I?”

“They were older than they really are. So was I.”

“But before you saw your sisters, you saw Eryth,” Amira said. “Yes?”

Willow dimly recollected shimmering trees and a silver-threaded sky. She retrieved the images as best she could, telling Amira and Cole of Eryth’s strange, lush beauty.

Cole crossed his arms over his chest. “And this Eryth . It’s, what? The Big Rock Candy Mountains of some magical faerie world?”

“It is. Yes,” Willow said. “And it’s real , Cole. I know it is.”

Cole twisted his lips and looked away uncomfortably.

Willow went on, describing with awe the jewel-toned serpents that slipped from the forest like fog.

“Duskwyrms,” Amira said reverently.

“Duskwyrms,” Willow repeated. She described the one serpent that was wounded and how she’d wanted to help. How the wyrm had looked into Willow’s eyes and wordlessly begged for her help.