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The mosquito hovered lazily in place, buzzing and buzzing. Severine stepped forward and plucked it from the air between two fingers. She squeezed, and a tiny burst of blood and pulp smeared her fingertips. She wiped the mess on her skirt.

“You see?” she said. “It isn’t hard.”

Aesra dipped her head. “Yes, my Queen.”

“Our guest showed more composure than you—and she’s a mortal!”

Aesra’s ears flushed red. Willow’s ears, too, felt hot.

They picked their way through the last stretch of the trail, thorns snagging at Willow’s skirt. Then, as it had yesterday, the forest dropped away, and they were on the spongy ground of the small round clearing.

There it was. The pond.

“You want another gift from the normal world?” Willow asked, already knowing the answer.

“‘The normal world,’” Severine mused aloud. “A rather flattering term, don’t you think?”

Willow blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You call it ‘the normal world,’ but it’s not. To us, it’s the mire.”

“The mire?”

“A world of concrete and car alarms. Of discarded things and toothless rituals, where mortals build and waste and call it progress. You pile your dead in metal drawers. And yet”—Severine crouched, fingertips brushing the moss that slicked the stones closest to the pond—“your world gives birth to such vitality, almost as if it can’t help itself.

Weeds, mold, larvae. Spores thick as smoke after rain.

You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. That stubborn, surging push. That hunger to grow.”

To her surprise, Willow felt indignant on behalf of the mortal world. Yes, there was noise and dirt and waste and rot, but there was goodness, too. Cole. Brooxie and Ruby and Juniper. That hidden, aching belief that even a mortal, any mortal, could make the world better.

“What Serrin needs, only the mire can give,” Severine said. “And you, Willow, are the only one who can reach in and fetch it.”

Willow nodded and tried to embrace the sanctity of the task. “Another bird,” she said.

“A bird is better than nothing, I suppose. It will keep him from worsening. For now.”

Willow’s heart stuttered. Serrin, worsening? He was supposed to be healing. Growing stronger. She pictured Serrin—perfect, distant, noble—and her spirit curled protectively inward.

But if it wasn’t a bird Severine wanted, then what?

In her mind’s eye, Willow saw Cricket, the sweet, spoiled tabby who used to sit in her lap and purr like a motorboat. At night, when Willow went to bed, Cricket would curl against Willow’s stomach, kneading tiny claws into her pajamas until she drifted off to sleep.

She misses you like crazy, Juniper had said. She prowls the house looking for you, meowing a weird, sad meow. And then, changing the subject but not really, When are you coming home?

Willow shooed Cricket away, her thoughts racing ahead to make space for what came next.

“In the normal world,” she began—she would not call it the mire—“we wrap our meat in plastic. We shape it like dinosaurs for children’s plates.”

Severine’s eyebrows went up. “Dinosaurs? I don’t think I’ve ever—” She blinked. “How odd.”

“But it’s still meat,” Willow said. “Still a life, taken so another can go on.”

“Yes,” Severine said. “We do what we must for the ones we love.”

“A cat,” Willow whispered. “Would a cat do?”

Severine’s smile, when it came, was soft and proud. “A cat would do nicely.”

Willow knelt, dampness soaking into her skirt.

The water reflected nothing. She could not see herself in it, nor could she see the sky above.

She gathered herself, reaching inward for that strange thread of power she had grasped before, the connection that had pulled something through .

She pressed her hands together, as if in prayer, and reached into the water.

It was thick and unmoving, and she willed herself not to draw back as slime slid over her wrists. She flexed her fingers, searching for something, anything, to indicate life stirring below.

Nothing.

She plunged her hands deeper, fingers splaying wide. Her breath hitched as something slithered past her knuckles, and for one thrilling, horrible moment, she thought she had found it.

But no. The pond was only teasing her.

Willow drew back and sat on her heels, flicking pond water from her fingertips. She was being tested, that much was clear. But it wasn’t about the cat. Not really. It was about control. Mastery. Whether she could wield the strange power that kept blooming in her, unpredictable and wild.

Okay. Think.

She had two gifts. The first was the Fade, the gift from Wrenna’s lover, Orrin, that allowed her to slip between places, to exist in the cracks that others had forgotten or erased. But this pond was neither forgotten nor erased. The Fade would do nothing here.

The second of Willow’s gifts was the gift of Sight, and this gift came from Wrenna. It was the hint of fae in Wrenna’s blood that allowed Willow to see visions, after all, and what were visions but things that were and weren’t there at the same time?

At Amira’s house, with the scrying bowl, Amira had awakened Willow’s ability to see with a drop of Willow’s blood. If her blood had carried her before, perhaps it could do so again?

She found the sharpest stone she could and raked it across her palm, hard enough to raise a red line. She clenched her fist, willing the blood to pool in her palm. Then she opened her hand and pressed it to the water’s surface.

The blood should have vanished. Instead, it lingered, a smear of red against green scum. Trembling, shimmering, alive.

Yes.

Willow focused everything into that single point of contact.

A ripple spread outward. The water thickened, darkening like tar.

Something rose from beneath, and Willow leaned back, heart galloping, as it broke the surface—a slick glint of fur, a flash of teeth, a ridge of scaled spine.

Golden eyes stared through the murk, furious and unblinking.

Then the creature spun and vanished, its tail whipping like a blade.

A dragon.

She had seen a dragon.

Behind her, Severine sighed. Willow turned and saw that the queen hadn’t seen what she’d seen. The dragon had revealed itself only to her.

“I rather hoped you’d be quicker than this,” Severine murmured. “Unless Serrin’s time doesn’t matter?”

Willow’s spine straightened.

She could do this.

She would do this.

She’d just seen a dragon, after all.

This time, she thought not of Cricket but of the goats she’d seen in Lost Souls and again at World’s End—scrawny things with ribs like rungs and knotted coats clotted with burrs.

Survivors. She remembered the girl sitting on the fence rail, barefoot and silent, holding onto her goat with a length of frayed string.

Willow had smiled at the girl. The girl hadn’t smiled back.

She thought of the boy with the bad buzz cut. She thought of Cole. Sometimes all someone needs is a little blue sugar stick that tells them they matter, just for a second, he’d said.

No, not now. This wasn’t about Cole but about Serrin.

Her prince. Her match.

A goat for Serrin. Okay.

This time, her hands slipped easily into the pond. Her fingers groped, stretching and seeking, before closing around something warm and furred, heavier than a bird by far.

She positioned her hands beneath it as if scooping a child from sleep. It shifted, heavier than she’d expected.

She pulled it free—a goat just like the one on the leash made of string. Maybe exactly the one on the leash made of string. Its rough fur clung to its emaciated frame, every rib jutting. Its legs dangled, limp and awkward, and its sodden ears drooped.

Goats were meant to be stubborn, scrappy things, all hooves and fight. This one simply sagged, limp as a rag.

“Beautiful,” Severine murmured, stepping closer. Her voice was reverent. “Very few mortals could have done that. But you are not like most mortals, are you?”

She reached for the goat, but Willow twisted sideways.

“I’ll give it to you,” she said, her voice only slightly wobbly, “but only if you tell me when the Mating Ceremony is.”

The warmth in Severine’s smile thinned. “It is tiresome, Willow, this lack of trust.”

“I want to know the exact date,” Willow said. “Not ‘soon.’ Not ‘when the time is right.’ If it’s a ceremony, then it requires planning, doesn’t it? Preparation? You know when it will be, so tell me.”

Severine’s gaze drifted to the goat.

“You said he needs me,” Willow pressed.

“He does.”

“I need him, too,” she said. “And if I can’t have him yet, then give me something. Please. To hold onto.”

Severine steepled her hands beneath her chin. “If you must know, the Mating Ceremony is in one week.”

Willow’s heart jumped.

“I do wish you had trusted me,” Severine went on, her voice touched with the sorrow of a hostess robbed of her surprise. “There is joy in anticipation. In faith.” She held out her arms. “Well, give me the goat.”

Willow smoothed her giddy joy into something more composed, something worthy of a future queen, and passed the goat into Severine’s waiting arms.