Page 33

WILLOW GASPED AS the air punched from her lungs, her knees slamming not into wood but soil—damp, warm, and breathing. She sucked in a lungful of strange air. It tasted musky, a bit like Amira’s heavy perfume, but layered with something deeper, loamier, faintly sweet.

She wasn’t in the Box anymore. Not in Hemridge. Not in the world of her parents, her sisters, or Mr. Chapman.

Or Cole. She was no longer in Cole’s world, but that was as it should be. She was somewhere else entirely—the forest she’d dreamed about, the realm Serrin had tugged her toward night after night.

The place she was meant to be.

She pushed herself into a sitting position. A forest stretched around her, vast and endless. The trees were impossibly tall, their bark slick and silvered. Their leaves rustled and curled as if catching her scent.

She tilted her face to the sky—a wash of lavender threaded with soft, moving light, like the inside of a geode. No sun. No moon. No stars. And yet the world glowed.

“I did it,” she whispered, breath trembling in her chest. Amira had been right. She was the chosen one. The Box had let her through, and Eryth had let her in. She was here.

She rose on unsteady legs, brushing damp soil from her jeans.

Something rustled, and she spun to see a duskwyrm slither out from beneath a gnarled root, its scales catching the light in a ripple of amethyst and oil. Willow froze, heart jackhammering.

But then wonder overtook fear. The duskwyrm, like Eryth, was just as she’d imagined. Its golden eyes fixed on hers. It flicked its forked tongue.

“It’s okay,” Willow said softly. She lifted her hands, palms out. “You’re okay. I’m a friend. See?”

It stared at her. Then, with a swish of muscle, it turned and vanished into the undergrowth.

She stood there for a moment longer, breathing hard. But she wasn’t afraid. She refused to be. She was meant to be here, and everything would make sense soon.

She turned in a slow circle. There were no roads or markers in the endless forest, only the rustle of leaves.

But—wait. She squinted. Past the trees, something shimmered. She stepped closer, and the shimmer grew stronger until a path unfurled, drawn into being as if it had waited only for her.

She followed it, her heart full.

She walked past fungi the size of wagon wheels, their caps changing color. She glimpsed pools of still water that held hints of events that hadn’t yet happened, glimpses of herself in rooms she had never seen. A door with no handle. A child’s hand reaching. A boy’s face, pale and blurred.

She paused at the sight of the boy, unnerved.

The moment passed. It was just magic being magic. Whatever it meant, it was something good.

The path rose, cresting a ridge, and below—nestled against the curve of a distant mountain—she saw the court.

It looked nothing like Hemridge. Nothing like Atlanta.

Its towers stretched tall and wild, grown more than built, stone threaded with moss and shimmer.

The spires were uneven—some coiled like shells, others tapering like leaves.

Bridges arched between rooftops, elegant and impractical, draped with long pennants that fluttered though there was no wind.

Balconies bloomed from the walls like petals.

Vines spilled from rooftop gardens in bursts of blossom and color.

Windows caught the lavender sky and bent it into prisms. The whole city shimmered as if it were alive.

Not a dream but a promise—somewhere inside those towers was Serrin, who’d been waiting all this time.

She hadn’t properly met him, but she knew him. Didn’t she?

He would understand her.

He would be kind.

He would see her for who she really was. All she had to do was go to the court and find him.

“The promised one arrives at last,” came a voice from the left.

Willow jumped, pivoting to see a woman step out from behind a stone arch. She positioned herself in a wide stance, this woman, her hands clasped behind her back in the way of a soldier too experienced to bother with fear.

She was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a white uniform—a blouse with billowing sleeves, trousers with cuffed legs—bound by a silver sash. She said, “I am Aesra, Secret Sister to the queen. And you”—she looked Willow up and down—”are the one the queen has been expecting.”

Aesra turned. “Come,” she commanded.

Willow hesitated.

Aesra glanced back and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you not hear me? You have been summoned. Shall I drag you, or will you walk?”

“Walk,” Willow said. “I’m coming. I’m coming!”

The castle gates groaned open at their arrival, and Willow followed Aesra inside.

They crossed a wide courtyard of black stone where trees grew in perfect symmetry along the walls. Soon, a great stairway rose before them. Willow climbed without speaking, her breath quickening as they ascended.

At the top of the stairs was a set of tall doors. Aesra pressed her palm to the seal at their center, and they opened. Beyond was a long, vaulted corridor lined with statues of creatures with wings and antlers and too many eyes. Willow’s footsteps sounded small against the flagstones.

At the end of the corridor waited another set of doors, taller than the last. These led into the throne room, vast and regal.

Willow’s body reacted before her mind did—knees tensing, throat tightening, a cold flush rising up the back of her neck.

It wasn’t fear, exactly. More like awe sharpened into vigilance.

The ceiling arched high above in faceted glass, each pane tinted a faint rose gold. Along the walls, tall iron sconces threw firelight across the space. At the far end of the chamber, raised on a platform of dark stone, was a throne made of blackened branches twisted together with lengths of bone.

Willow thought of goats and skulls and little girls with dead, flat eyes. She shook the image away.

“Willow,” said the woman seated on the throne. Something in the angle of her jaw was familiar, or maybe it was the tilt of her head. Familiar but slippery—like a goldfish flitting behind a curtain of pondweed.

But the question of whether Willow had seen this woman before fell away when Willow took in the full force of her beauty.

Her hair was black, cascading in a single block of color past her shoulders. Her skin glowed, untouched by time. She wore a crown of silver thorns that strained skyward in sharp, elegant points.

Willow’s lips parted like a child’s. It was Severine. Queen Severine, whom Willow both knew and didn’t know in ways she didn’t understand.

Severine dipped her head in greeting. “Welcome.”

Willow’s feet carried her across the room, and a pair of attendants appeared from behind the columns, each carrying a silver tray.

A third emerged silently and pulled a high-backed chair from the shadows, placing it just below the platform—close enough that Willow could see every detail of the queen’s face but not so near as to suggest for a moment that Willow was an equal.

Willow sat, and the attendants placed the trays before her.

The food wasn’t like anything she’d had at World’s End. There was a glass bowl filled with iridescent berries that popped sweetly on the tongue. Thin slices of honeyed root draped over coiled greens. A cup of something pale and steaming, scented like cardamom.

“Eat,” Severine said. “You’ve traveled far. You must be hungry.”

Willow picked up a spoon without thinking, feeling very much as if she were in a dream.

But even dream food never tasted like this.

A curl of root vegetable dissolved on her tongue like spun sugar.

A cluster of iridescent berries burst between her teeth, leaving a trace of peppered citrus that made her eyes sting.

A sliver of meat—or something meat-like—filled her mouth with salt and smoke.

When Willow had eaten her fill and set down her spoon, Severine spoke.

“You came,” Severine said. “Thank the stars you came at last.”

“Of course,” Willow replied. “I came for Serrin.” Her chair scraped the floor as she rose, horrified to realize that she’d only now remembered why she was here.

“Where is he? I’d like to see him—right away, please!”

Severine exhaled. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

The food in Willow’s belly turned sour. “Why not?”

“He’s fading. Wasting away.”

Willow shook her head, confused. “No, that’s not possible. In my dreams, he wasn’t sick.”

“His mortal blood is poisoning him,” Severine said. “He is half-human, after all. Did you know? Half of him still belongs to your world. He needs your world’s sustenance. Here, in Eryth, he is slipping away.”

Willow felt herself slipping too, as if the stool beneath her had turned to an hourglass and she was made of sand, spilling through the narrow center.

“You are the only one who can save him, Willow,” Severine said. “I just hope it’s not too late.”

Her fingers curled around the armrests of the throne as she pushed herself up. “Come. You’ve traveled far enough for one day. Let me show you where you’ll sleep.”

Willow followed. Her limbs felt strange, as if Eryth’s gravity hadn’t fully taken hold.

Severine’s gown brushed the floor as she strode out of the throne room and down a new corridor. The palace opened around them, grand and uncanny. The walls shimmered, and gold-leaf vines threaded the ceiling. Mosaics of strange birds watched from the tiles.

Everywhere, the same boy appeared. He was painted on panels and carved in marble, pale-haired, moon-eyed, and beautiful.

Willow paused before one of the statues. “It is Serrin,” she said, not sure where her uncertainty sprang from. “Isn’t it?” In the statue, he stood beneath an arch of ivy, his hand outstretched.

“Of course,” Severine said. “Why ask questions when you already know the answer?”

“Please, Severine, can’t I see him just for a moment? I won’t tire him out.”

“Sweet girl,” Severine said with a gentle smile. “You will see him. But not yet.”

“When?”

Severine resumed walking. Willow fell in beside her.