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She wanted Ruby and Brooxie and their home-cooked meals. She wanted Cole and his muddy boots and his love for blue Pixy Stixs—or his willingness to give them a chance anyway. She wanted his arms around her and his lips on hers. Heart to heart, like to like.

She picked up her pace. Ahead was the thicket and the moss and the stagnant, scum-slicked pond—the place where the world frayed at the edges.

This was a threshold. She’d known it from the first time she’d come. She’d plucked living creatures from the normal world and brought them here, so hopefully the reverse would hold true. Hopefully, the veil would part and let her out of this cursed world.

She hesitated at the water’s edge, the pond’s surface a smear of algae and filmy residue. She thought of the dragon that had risen from its depths, its eyes lit with some private fury. What if it lingered below? What if it was hungry?

On the other hand... what if it helped her, the way the thorn dragon had helped Maeve?

She waded in, the muck pulling greedily at her jean-clad calves. When the water reached her knees, she paused. Nodded. Then she lifted her arms over her head and dove.

The surface closed over her, and the world above vanished. All sound dulled. The water pressed in from every side—green, vast, thick as jelly. Her limbs moved sluggishly, her dress a dragging weight. Her eyes stung, but she kept them open. She searched.

A shimmer. A flicker. Something scaled and serpentine darted just out of reach.

She kicked upward and broke the surface, gasping.

Still Eryth.

Still the same foul-smelling pond.

She slapped the water. “Come on!” she shouted. “Let me out!”

She dove again, pushing herself down into the murk, cupping her hands and scooping water behind her. She swam harder, deeper. Her ears popped. Her limbs burned. Just when the lack of oxygen threatened to crack her ribs, her palms struck something smooth.

A barrier.

She pushed against it, and it gave—just slightly, like Saran Wrap stretched over gelatin.

She pushed at it and poked at it and tried her best to gouge it open, but the seal refused to break.

She kicked back toward the surface and broke through with a ragged cry, dragging air into her body in gulps. Why couldn’t she cross through?

There was definitely a boundary. She could feel it. But she’d pulled birds and goats and even a possum across that divide, which meant life could pass through. So why not her?

She breaststroked to the shallows near the pond’s edge. Her feet found the soft bottom, and she rose, water sheeting from her hair and clothes. Her breath came fast. Her mind reeled.

And then—

Amira.

The memory struck hard: Amira’s clever hands, the dagger, the sting of having her finger pricked.

The blood oath. Of course.

Willow pressed her fists to her forehead, lifted her face to the sky, and screamed, knowing she was too far now for any guard to hear her.

She tromped out of the water and onto the bank, each step squelching through moss and mud.

She had to find a duskwyrm.

~

She slogged toward the pond’s far edge, her hair clinging to her face and neck, the hem of her jeans catching on stones and roots. Here, there was a marshy stretch where the pond narrowed, forming a sluggish inlet choked with slime and rotting reeds.

If Willow were a snake, this was where she’d make a home.

She crouched, pushing her hands into the fetid mud.

“Come on,” she whispered. “If you’re there, come and show yourself.”

An owl hooted. A night frog burbled. Then came a slithering, shivering noise, and Willow opened her eyes.

A duskwyrm emerged from the shallows, its sapphire-colored scales muted by a film of algae. It was small. Misshapen. The midpoint of its spine curved wrong, like a bow pulled too tight.

Willow didn’t move.

The wyrm rose halfway from the sludge. No hiss. No fangs. Just its narrow head, which tilted toward her with recognition.

“I know you,” Willow acknowledged. “You’re the one from before. From the vision.”

The wyrm hitched forward, sliding through bog gunk until it reached the moss Willow knelt on. Willow held her breath as—slowly, slowly—it extended the top of its snout toward her hand.

It wanted her to touch it.

Willow hesitated, primal caution pinging in her chest. But this sad creature hadn’t hissed or struck. Its body was trembling. She looked at the wyrm and nodded her permission.

The duskwyrm glided over her hand, and Willow was transported as magic sucked the air from her lungs. Her vision blurred and cleared, and she was no longer in the bog. She was somewhere else, hidden in the folds of memories not her own.

She saw Aesra. Younger. Pale and grim, standing in a moonlit garden.

A small ring of women stood around her: Secret Sisters in their distinctive white uniforms and silver sashes. One held a duskwyrm—not just any duskwyrm but the duskwyrm from the bog, the one whose head lay right now upon Willow’s hand.

Only, in the vision, the wyrm was sleek and healthy, its iridescent body winding like a sapphire ribbon around the Sister’s arm.

“You must,” one Sister told Aesra grimly. “It is the way.”

Young Aesra extended her arm. She was shaking.

The duskwyrm bit her—a quick flick of the tongue before the Sister yanked the wyrm away.

Aesra burst into tears, and a second Sister slapped her across the face.

The vision spun. Aesra again—older now, maybe seventeen—knelt beside the same wyrm, now trapped in a glass enclosure. Aesra closed her eyes, as if summoning her courage. Then she scowled and stuck her arm through the narrow opening. The wyrm struck. Another bite.

Year after year, Aesra came to the wyrm. Year after year, she grew more resentful, until Aesra, enraged, smashed her fist down on the wyrm’s enclosure. The glass shattered, and Aesra leaped back. The wyrm coiled in fear.

“You stupid, stupid snake!” Aesra cried, recovering before the wyrm did. “Always staring at me with those stupid eyes! You made me lash out. You made me break your cage. But I’ll be the one in trouble, won’t I? Unless...” Slyness transformed Aesra’s features. She found a rock and lifted it high.

Willow came out of the vision panting. The duskwyrm remained in front of her, broken and twitching but alive. Trusting. The duskwyrm Aesra had maimed had come to Willow for a reason.

Willow flipped her hand and held it flat, palm up.

“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll take you somewhere safe, far from the Sisters. Far from the queen.”

Tentatively, she ran a finger down the duskwyrm’s body, and Willow saw the glint of old bruising on one flank, a place where scales had cracked and healed over wrong.

“I won’t hurt you,” she whispered. “I promise.”

The duskwyrm inched forward, and Willow slid her hand beneath its jaw. The wyrm tensed but didn’t pull away.

Digging her knee into the ground, Willow used her free hand to rip a length of sodden denim from the hem of her jeans.

She swaddled the duskwyrm in it, bundling its shivering body with the same technique she’d seen her mother use to calm Juniper as a fussy infant.

She cinched the makeshift sling across her torso, then bowed her head and, through the fabric, pressed her lips to the duskwyrm’s wounded spine. “Shh,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

The duskwyrm quieted, coiling and settling beneath her chin.

Willow trudged back to the mossy bank that offered the best access to the pond. The cold rose quickly as she waded back in. Ankles, knees, hips. When it reached her ribs, she lifted her arms above her head, pushed off with her feet, and dove beneath the surface.

There was no up. No down. Just pressure. Churning darkness. Her body twisted, caught in some great and receptive spiral, tumbling like laundry.

Her ears filled with whispered languages she didn’t know. Shapes pressed past her—and faces—but when she tried to reach for them, she found that her limbs no longer obeyed.

Then came a deafening stillness.

She floated. Not quite body, not quite soul. A bubble caught between one world and the next.

Was this where Orrin had gone? Not dead. Not alive. Just—between?

Her eyes welled with tears, and Willow let them spill. Salt mixed with magic, grief mixed with purpose.

The bubble she was trapped in shimmered.

Something shifted.

A current. A pull. She felt pressure everywhere at once. Her limbs stretched too long, then compressed to nothing. She felt herself flattened and folded, as if some unseen hands were tucking her into a crease between realities.

Time slowed, and she had no heartbeat. No breath. Only the sensation of slipping, slipping, slipping...

A seductive darkness curled around her, rocking her like a baby and promising silence and peace. Her limbs slackened. Her mind began to fade.

Then—a pinch, sudden and precise.

The duskwyrm had slipped its head through a gap in the sling, nosing past the folds of fabric to press against her skin. She felt it at the hollow of her neck, the delicate scrape of fangs withdrawing. It hadn’t struck to harm—just a nip to pull her back to the world.

From above and beyond came the muffled sound of a man shouting. Frantic. Urgent.

“Hold on!” he called. “I’m coming!”

Willow’s body surged forward, as if spit out by the pond itself. Her forehead struck wood, and pain jolted through her skull and down her spine. Her shoulder twisted at an awkward angle, knees jammed against the confines of a coffin.

The duskwyrm hissed against her neck.

She wanted to move, but she couldn’t. All she could do was blink as the Box began to open from the outside.

Light spilled in. A man’s voice, a voice she loved. The smell of cornbread and browned butter and...

Cole.

He leaned over her, his shaggy hair longer than ever, awe softening every line of his face. He looked like someone who’d just cracked open a miracle.

“Willow,” he said. “You’re back.”

Her lower lip trembled before curving into a wobbly smile.