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SHE FOUND MAEVE in the servants’ quarters, her back to Willow, curled on her side in the pathetic cot away from all the other beds.

No one else was in the room. They were reliving the shock of the ceremony, no doubt.

It wasn’t her! they’d cry. Did you see? Serrin, the prince—he’s fated to someone else!

Maeve didn’t care about that nonsense.

Maeve, like Willow, was grieving Jace.

Willow gently shook Maeve’s shoulder. Maeve responded violently, springing up to sitting as if her muscles had been pulled back and released.

“Just a small rest. That’s all,” she blurted. “But I’ll still tend to the—”

She made out Willow’s form in the shadows.

Willow watched the realization sweep slowly over Maeve’s face.

Willow wasn’t one of Maeve’s superiors or tormentors or one of the hundreds of court fae who humiliated her daily.

Willow was the reason her friend was dead.

Willow was the reason that Aesra had unsheathed her sword, swung it through the air, and sliced off Jace’s head—her red curls, her irreverent smile—right off her body.

It had landed heavily on the floor of the Great Hall, bounced once, and listed sideways, Jace’s blue eyes open and staring.

“Get out,” Maeve spat. Her crooked spine gave her the look of a cobra preparing to strike. She rose to her feet and put her face right up in front of Willow’s. “Get. Out,” she spat again, so close Willow felt the heat of her breath.

“I’m leaving. Don’t worry,” Willow said.

Her heart gave a horrible lurch, and she wanted to beg for this girl’s forgiveness.

Tell her how sorry she was, how she hadn’t for a single instant expected Jace to be punished with death.

.. but what good was a single one of Willow’s words?

Maeve did not want them, and Willow would not spill them just to satisfy her own selfish needs.

“Come with me,” she said.

Maeve’s eyes widened. Willow had surprised her.

“I can get you out of the court. I know a hidden way. You can still tell that Brody guy all about Severine.”

“She’s a woman,” Maeve said.

“What?”

“Brody. She’s a woman—and a leader. A real leader. She would help Eryth heal.”

“Heal from what?” Willow asked.

Maeve’s eyes narrowed, and Willow shook her head, holding out her hands in an attempt to appease her. “Never mind. Not the time.” She glanced at the empty hall outside the servants’ quarters, which wouldn’t stay empty for long. “Grab whatever you need, and let’s go.”

Maeve cocked her head, and moonlight from the open window caught the waxy sheen of it, the puckered flesh that looked as if it had been burned from within. “Willow. That’s your name?”

Willow felt as if Maeve had taken a bucket of muck and thrown it straight into Willow’s face—her tone was that contemptuous.

“Yes,” Willow said.

“I’m the washing girl. That’s my job.”

“Okay.”

“And the serving girl. And the linens girl. And if anyone’s having a bad day or needs to feel superior to someone else, I’m the whipping girl. I’m all of those things here in Eryth’s fine court.”

Willow nodded. She understood that it was bad, yes. She should have done more to help Maeve—and earlier.

She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. More? Earlier?

She hadn’t helped Maeve, ever.

She should have, full stop.

“I’m sorry,” Willow said. “It’s messed up, and I should have done something. Spoken to the prince, fought for changes, made everyone see—”

“Stop,” Maeve interrupted. “I don’t need your ‘should have’s. I don’t need your pretty words. What I’m saying is, I work here. And the wages I earn? The two talons the mistress takes from her pouch and reluctantly passes over at the end of every month?”

She snorted, which told Willow all she needed to know about wages and fair labor laws here in the court, at least as applied to the Blighted.

“Those talons go to my family, Willow. They put food on my family’s table.” She glared at Willow. “So thank you for your offer to let me run away with you. It’s ever so kind.” She shook her head, and her disdain was all the more potent for the restraint Maeve showed. “I’ll pass.”

Maeve’s words knocked Willow off-balance.

Running away? Was that what Willow was doing?

Since the day she got here, she’d been treated like royalty—or mortal royalty, at any rate.

She’d been given free rein, or close enough, to go wherever she wanted, to do as she pleased.

She’d breathed in all the lovely things—Poppy’s ridiculous gowns, jugglers juggling flaming pears, moonstone basins and seashell cottages and—oh, God—Jace’s magical hot chocolate.

But she’d seen ugliness, too. A marching band forced to march till their feet blistered and their lungs trembled. The forced smiles of certain court folk. The cruelty of handsome fae boys who jeered at Maeve and tripped her and knocked their food to the floor for her to clean up.

Willow deserved Maeve’s scorn, every last jagged shard of it. She should have fought to make Eryth a better and more just land. She’d told herself she would, one day, with Serrin... but why hadn’t she on her own, as herself?

Now Jace was dead. Serrin was betrothed to the mirage of a girl who looked dangerously like Willow’s sister, Ash. And Willow?

Willow—yes—was running away. It was what she was best at.

A lump formed in her throat, salty and painful and too much to bear, except that she would bear it, even though it hurt.

“But Brody,” she croaked. “If you leave with me, you can tell Brody about the queen. Brody can make things better. Jace said so. Isn’t that worth two talons a month?”

Maeve laughed, a bitter, hopeless sound. “I can tell Brody, yes. I can tell Brody what she already knows, with a few extra details for flavor.” She looked at Willow as if she were an imbecile. “What Jace had was proof. That’s what Brody needs.”

Willow frowned. The last thing she wanted to do was argue with Maeve, to say, Well, hon, I know this might be complicated for someone like you to understand.

.. But what Jace had had was a testimonial, nothing more and nothing less.

She’d witnessed the queen’s depravity, but did that really count as proof?

Those who were already on Brody’s side—the rebels, Willow supposed—they’d have believed Jace, no question.

But would Jace’s story have meant anything to those who were on the fence?

“You be Jace, then,” Willow said helplessly. “Tell Brody and the others that you saw what Jace saw.”

Maeve scoffed. “And everyone will just believe me?”

No, and that was the problem. But Jace had thought it was worth a shot, and last night, in the corridor, Maeve had sure seemed to think so, too.

“I get it,” Willow said. “A firsthand account is problematic no matter who it comes from. But is the information only worth sharing if it comes from Jace?”

“The information is only worth sharing if it’s an incontrovertible record of what happened. That’s what Jace had.” Maeve bugged out her eyes: Do you get it now, you idiot? “She captured everything in her scrying spoon.”

Willow didn’t want to be an idiot. She tried to catch up. “The spoon behind her ear?” she asked.

“It’s a truth-teller. It holds a visual record of anything witnessed by its owner. It doesn’t lie, and it can’t be tampered with. That was the proof Jace had for Brody.” Maeve blinked ferociously. “Only Jace is dead, and her spoon is gone.”

Willow’s pulse quickened, and everything became a thousand times more urgent in the space of a heartbeat.

“Maeve? We have to go, and we have to go now.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out Jace’s spoon.

Maeve dragged the back of her hand beneath her eyes. With her vision cleared, she took in the spoon. On Maeve’s scarred face, bewilderment bloomed into wonder, and then her wonder reshaped itself into grim and beautiful resolve.

She shoved her feet into beat-up footwear that might once have resembled shoes. “Yes. Let’s go.”

~

Willow fashioned Miriam’s gray blanket around Maeve’s head like a hood, then led Maeve through the palace halls to the tall stone door that led to the topiary chessboard. She heard Maeve suck in her breath, which confirmed her suspicions. This garden wasn’t known to all.

They darted from square to square of alternating grass and petals.

Through the moonlight that made the dark grass darker and the pink blossoms glow like hope.

Past the serpent, the unicorn, the gryphon with its leafy wings.

Past the dragon made from brambles, only this time, it didn’t hiss when Willow and Maeve crossed before it.

It lifted its mighty thorned head and roared, and the roar swept up Willow and Maeve like a magic carpet or an unfurling tongue.

Buffeted by dragon breath, they flew above the grounds until they reached the palace gates. There, the stream of air bucked, and Willow was thrown off. Maeve was carried onward, perched on the thorny dragon’s roar as if she’d been born for this.

Maybe she had. Maybe the thorn dragon had sensed it—like to like—and would carry Maeve, with her bad ankle and crooked spine, all the way to the mysterious Brody.

“Good luck,” Willow called, though not very loudly for fear of drawing the attention of the palace guards.

The gray blanket-turned-hood had fallen backward, allowing Maeve’s hair to stream out behind her like a banner. She thrust Jace’s spoon in the air—a standard in miniature, small in size but as mighty as any sword.

Willow watched her until she was swallowed by the night. Then Willow doubled back to the low iron gate, passing through it into the borderlands where the wild things grew.

Her feet were sure and steady. Her heart was sure and steady. Broken? Yes. But reaching for home. Her home.

Not Atlanta. Not Hemridge. Lost Souls was where she ached to be, with its fireflies and bleating goats and the sweet chime of silverware hung from wire and swaying together—music made by the breeze.