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brOOXIE AND RUBY wished Willow luck when they saw her off the next morning.

They tucked an apple and some cheese into her backpack on top of the soft gray baby blanket.

Willow wanted to give them the money from her wallet, but they refused to take it.

So Willow tucked the wallet onto one of the kitchen shelves when they weren’t looking.

Would she return here one day and learn what they’d done when they’d found it? Did she want to?

She hoped they’d use some of the money for the kids in the settlement where Amira lived, the goat girl with the blank eyes and the little boy who dreamed of Pixy Stixs.

“Be careful,” Ruby said fretfully, brushing imaginary lint from Willow’s peasant blouse, which Ruby had washed and ironed the night before.

“Stay alert,” Brooxie said. She nodded at Cole. “You too.”

“You know I will,” Cole replied.

“I do.” Brooxie gave a small smile as she looked from Cole to Willow. “You’re both just as stubborn as can be, aren’t you? I don’t know which of you is worse.”

“He is,” Willow said, while at the same time Cole jerked his thumb at Willow and said, “Willow. Obviously.”

Their laughter broke the buildup of tension, and the hugs Ruby and Brooxie doled out at the front door made Willow feel supercharged. Competent. Not like a little girl but a young woman, marching clear-eyed into her future.

Outside, the sunlight was bright and warm, making the green leaves greener and catching dew drops that glistened on early morning spider webs.

But the dog-collar chains and the rusted fence posts weren’t as off-putting as they’d been before.

The path still twined and twisted, but Willow was more sure of her footing.

Even the small animal bones dangling from the eaves of Amira’s porch could almost be interpreted as quirky mountain strangeness rather than something worse.

The teeth protruding from the clay smeared near her front door?

No.

The teeth had grown larger and sharper—Willow would swear to it. Willow looked away from them fast.

Amira frowned when she saw Cole by Willow’s side, but she let them both in. She must have known he’d insist on coming. She’d probably known even before Willow had.

Her dark eyes glittered as she looked the two of them up and down. Her fingers traced the edges of a folded piece of parchment.

“Good morning,” she said. “And congratulations. You will soon be on your way to the Box.”

“What?” Willow glanced around the room, scanning the shelves, the shadowed alcoves. “What do you mean ‘on my way’ to the Box? Isn’t it ready? Isn’t it here?”

“Patience, Willow, remains a virtue, even for those with the Old Blood. The Queen’s Box rests elsewhere. Sleeping. Waiting.”

Amira unfolded the parchment and spread it out across the counter. On it, an inked trail wound through stylized mountains and across rippling rivers. Tucked into a grove of what might have been pines was a single black dot.

Amira tapped it. “Here.”

The name beside the mark was World’s End . Willow frowned. “World’s End? I’ve never heard of it. Is it in North Carolina?”

“It is a village high on Old Mother Mountain,” Amira said. “A village lost to time and wind, a place where only the foolish or the determined—”

“It’ll take a day to hike there,” Cole cut in. “I know it.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Amira said.

The loathing between them could have scorched rocks.

“Great.” Willow turned to Cole. “Do we need the map, or can you get us there without it?”

Amira lifted the map out of reach. “You need the map. There is, however, the matter of the blood oath to be tended to first.”

Willow felt a chill creep over her skin. She rubbed her arms, trying to dispel the sensation. It felt like pondweed—cool and slimy, like fronds clinging to her beneath the surface of still black water.

Amira folded the map and tapped the edge against the palm of her other hand. “With this, you will have all you need to find the Box. And the Box—if it accepts you—will transport you to Eryth.”

Cole tensed. Willow felt it in the slight adjustment of his weight and muscles.

“But to return from Eryth,” Amira continued, “you must bring me a gift.”

“What sort of gift?” Willow asked.

“A duskwyrm.”

Cole muttered a curse and shook his head, as if angry with the world.

Willow saw the duskwyrms from her vision, their jewel-toned bodies coiled like ribbons, their eyes far too sad for such small and lovely creatures.

Doubt stirred in her chest. She pressed it down.

No price was too high if it got her a step closer to Serrin.

And Amira said she’d only have to bring a duskwyrm if she chose to return from Eryth. Who said she would?

“Fine,” she said.

“You must swear to it.” Amira set the map aside. From beneath the counter, she drew forth a slender dagger wrapped in silk. The blade, when revealed, gleamed with an oily sheen. “A blood oath.”

“Hold up,” Cole said, stepping slightly in front of Willow as if to keep Amira from getting to her. “Blood oaths are not to be undertaken lightly.”

Amira tilted her head. “I agree.”

“What if we don’t find the Box? What if it’s gone or guarded or doesn’t work?”

“Cole,” Willow said, stepping out from behind him.

“Everything will unfold as planned,” Amira replied simply.

“That’s no answer,” Cole snapped. “What if the Box doesn’t take her to Eryth? What if it does—and refuses to let her come back?”

“The Box will take her. The Box will return her. That is its purpose.”

“You say that,” Cole said, “but you don’t actually know, do you?”

Amira’s expression turned furious and cold. “I know far too well what the Box can and cannot do.” She took a moment. Her chest rose and fell.

Then, her emotions once more under control, she turned to Willow. “Well?”

“Do it,” Willow said.

Amira drew the edge of the blade first across her own finger.

A drop of blood bloomed on her skin. Then she reached for Willow’s hand.

The dagger’s tip was delicate against the pad of Willow’s finger.

There was a brief resistance, then the point broke the skin, giving passage to a bead of crimson that welled on her fingertip, bright and vivid as a pomegranate seed.

Amira brought their hands together, fingertip to fingertip. The flame in the nearest candle guttered, then flared steady again.

“The oath is sealed,” Amira said. She gave Willow the map. “Now go. And don’t come back empty-handed.”

~

Cole hitched the strap of a canvas bag stuffed with wool blankets and a few cans of spaghetti higher on his shoulder.

He’d gotten the meager supplies from the goat girl’s mother when they’d first started off.

It seemed that word had spread about the boy with the crew cut who’d bought his little sister a doll with strawberry-scented hair because the woman had talked Cole up from twenty-five dollars to a hundred, payable upon Cole’s return.

“Take it or leave it, rich boy,” the woman had said.

Willow had enjoyed seeing the flush that had risen up Cole’s neck, but she’d smiled innocently and said nothing.

They’d been hiking for a good two hours now, and Willow’s bright amusement had faded to black.

“You look miserable,” Cole said.

“I am,” Willow complained.

“Try to see it as a gift. Suffering builds character, you know.”

“I’ve got plenty of character. I want the Box.”

“Ah, yes,” Cole said. “To reach your precious Serrin.”

Willow rolled her eyes. He had stopped needling her about Serrin for the most part, but she still caught him watching her sometimes, his eyes full of something sad. Whatever it was, it vanished the moment he caught her looking.

The woods grew wilder and stranger. The canopy of branches hung low, and the roots rose high.

The trail, if you could call it that, took them single file along a ravine choked with witch hazel and redbud.

Willow’s legs were stiff, her shoulders tight, and her headache throbbed in time with her pulse.

They reached a narrowing in the gorge, where the rocks leaned toward each other like old men whispering secrets.

Cole hopped down lightly, then turned and held out a hand to her.

She ignored him and scrambled down the rocks on her own, only to tumble backward against a bristling shrub.

A thorn pierced straight through the worn denim of her jeans, and she yelped.

Cole looked on as if she’d staged the entire event for his entertainment. When a horde of fire ants streamed out from beneath the shrub, she yelped again and leaped quickly out of their path.

“You know, if you’d accepted my help...” he said.

She scowled, her dignity hanging by a thread. “I don’t need your help,” she snapped, even as a particularly wicked barb throbbed under the curve of her ass.

Cole laughed and walked on.

Willow followed, wincing as the thorn pressed deeper. She fumbled at it, but it remained lodged in her flesh.

“Okay, actually, I do need your help,” she said after bearing the pain for ten more seconds.

Cole turned around. “Oh?” He was enjoying this. Immensely.

“There’s a thorn,” she said. “In my...” She huffed and turned to show him. “Just—don’t make it weird.”

“Me? Never.” He crouched, and she felt the heat of his gaze. “Permission to touch the royal backside?”

“Just do it.”

He plucked the thorn free.

“Ow!” Willow cried, rubbing the sore spot.

Cole regarded the thorn in his cupped palms. “I’ll treasure this always.”

She batted it out of his hand.

They made camp near a riverbed, Cole moving efficiently and doing mountain-man things that resulted in a crackling fire and a bench made from an old stump turned sideways. Dinner was cold spaghetti, which Cole called “spagbol.” They scooped it from the can with their fingers.

The fire popped. The dancing flames were mesmerizing.

“Do you feel it?” Cole asked.

“Feel what?”