“Seren!” I cried, stumbling deeper into the wood. “Where . . .” I heard something crunch under my feet. I shifted my foot away, and there was a pair of broken glasses. Seren’s. I quickly grabbed them up. “Seren! Where are—”
Through the trees, I saw two figures in front of a hollowed-out log. One was Seren—and the other was impossibly tall, powerful, and skeletal. The ancient held Seren off the ground by his throat. Seren kicked and struggled, blood darkening the front of his jerkin from the ancient’s claws.
The monster was killing him.
I grabbed a stick from the ground and threw it at the beast. It hit the creature’s bone-white skull. The ancient dropped Seren and turned toward me.
Seren slumped onto the ground and didn’t move. Why wasn’t he moving?
The ancient studied me with gleaming yellow eyes. In the mist, black motes floated in the air like snow. But I’d never seen black snow before. It looked like . . . seeds. Black dandelion seeds.
Something stung the side of my neck, and I quickly brought my hand up to swipe away whatever it was—and I felt what could only be the woodcurse. Something like roots began to burrow into my skin, and I gave a cry, pulling at them, but they were already so deep.
The next thing I knew, the creature was towering over me, flashing its sharp white teeth. I stumbled back, over a root, and fell onto my back. The pain in my neck blossomed into agony, and I could barely move.
The ancient lunged for me. I screamed and flung my arms up over my face—
Then there was silence.
I felt a wetness drip onto my arm. It was bright red like a paint splotch. I turned my eyes upward.
In front of me was my mother. She knelt over me, her back toward the ancient, shielding me from harm. The ancient had its claws in her, so deep they came through the other side. In her honey hair, there were the daisies she had twined into them this morning. I remembered them so vividly. Not her face. Not her voice. The daisies. And I remembered that when she smiled at me that final time, her mouth was filled with blood. She pressed a red kiss on my forehead.
A shiver ran through me. The pain in my neck dulled.
But that was no longer my concern. The creature pulled its claws out of my mother’s side. It snarled, and she stood with great difficulty, turning to face the creature.
“Run, my darling,” she said over her shoulder to me. “I’m sorry.”
“But—no—”
That was when a loud, commanding voice boomed through the trees—the king’s voice. Roots swirled around me; they wrapped around my middle and pulled me away from the danger, through the wood faster than I could stop them. I clawed at the dirt because I couldn’t leave my mother. I couldn’t leave Seren. Not to face the creature alone—
My mother faded into the fog, facing that monster, and the roots pulled me out of the dark wood, finally letting go. I clawed at the ground to stand, and in front of me was King Merrick on his white horse, his crown glowing, its leaves twining and swaying. Wen was by his side. I would find out later that my mother had sent word to him before she entered the wood. He looked down at me with eyes still alight with the magic of the crown.
“Where’s my son?” he asked, his voice detached and cold.
“I—I don’t—I didn’t—”
“Where’s my son?” he said louder, more forceful.
I didn’t know how to answer him. He was in the wood—they were all still there, I knew it. They had to be. We had to go in and save my mother. I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t leave the prince. I couldn’t leave Seren.
I couldn’t—
But then the magic in his eyes faded, and he pressed his hands against his face, and he cried.
And none of them—neither the king nor his guard, soon there by his side—went in to save Lorne, or Seren, or my mother, because they already knew what I was too stubborn to believe. That it was too late. That they were dead. They were all dead the moment they met the ancient, the moment the seeds of the woodcurse had descended on us.
And yet, somehow, I had survived.
3
The Castle of Aloriya
Cerys
ANWEN SAID SHE would help me close down the shop before returning to the castle. I told her that she didn’t have to, but she pointed out that the sooner I got done, the sooner I could help Papa at the castle. It wasn’t a lie, but in truth I knew she didn’t want to return to being the heir to the throne quite yet. Or that was her intention. She came into town, in disguise, to get away from her name and her duties, but even while she helped me set the rest of the roses in their vases, I could tell that she hadn’t really escaped today. Her mind was lost somewhere else—maybe in her own doubts at being a good ruler, maybe in the crown’s ineffable power, or maybe in the wood itself—at least until we noticed that the fox had gotten into the spool of red yarn I had in a basket at the bottom of the stairs.
He rolled it around the shop, and when he realized that it was unspooling, well, you could just imagine his excitement. I didn’t have the heart to take it away from him, even though I’d bought the yarn fresh from our neighbor, intending to make a winter scarf for Papa, and Wen couldn’t stop laughing. After the fox unspooled the entire thing, he lay in a corner, kicking and nibbling at the thread.
“You’re so much trouble,” I mumbled, finding the end of the yarn, and began to reroll it.
The fox turned over and watched, flattening his ears to his head. He stuck up his rump, tail swishing, and pounced at the other end of the yarn, but I jerked it out of his claws. Wen watched with a secret sort of smile.
“I think I know why you keep him around,” she said as I rerolled the yarn.
“Because I want a winter hat?”
“Because you like the company, and it seems he likes yours.”
I snorted. “He likes the food.”
But really, Wen was right, like she always was about me. I liked his company. He stank most of the time, and he always dug up our garden, but he didn’t care that my blood grew flowers. He didn’t think I was cursed—not that foxes cared. Or understood.
“You should name him,” Papa had said the third time the creature came around, “if you’re not going to run him off.”
“I don’t own him, so why should I name him?”
“Fox, then,” Papa had suggested, and I’d rolled my eyes.
“Sure, Fox.”
So the name—or lack thereof—stuck.
The fox looked sad when I rolled up the rest of the yarn and placed it too high for him to reach. “Don’t give me that look,” I chastised him. “You made a mess, so I revoke your access to the yarn.”
“Oh, you’re mean,” Wen chided, and told the fox, “If you were at the castle, you could play with the yarn all you wanted to.”
“You’d spoil him.”
“Absolutely.”
By the time we finished all the rose bouquets, it was almost noon, and the Village-in-the-Valley pulsed with many more people than usual, all fresh up from Eldervale and Somersal-by-the-Sea for the coronation. They took the newly built railroad into town. You could see the train curving through the gentle mountains from miles away, a plume of black smoke against the otherwise cloudless sky. When the railroad first came to the Village-in-the-Valley, it mostly brought with it produce from the other kingdoms. Aloriya was a small country made smaller by the fact that the Wildwood was forbidden, and our towns were all less than a half day’s ride from one another. The Village-in-the-Valley, despite its name, was the largest city in the kingdom, home to the castle of Aloriya, so our town became the hub of trade—both inside Aloriya and between the kingdoms that surrounded us. We were affluent, and our kingdom’s coffers overflowed most years, and everyone knew why. Our fields were always golden. Our harvests were always healthy. Our people were always disease-free. It was all thanks to the crown. It could grow crops and darken the skies and move mountains if the wearer was strong enough. We existed in a life of simple splendors while the countries around us were plagued time and again with war and famine and pestilence. But those countries were also filled with new music and new stories and new universities I’d hear tell about in the tavern from merchants from far away . . .
Papa had been the castle’s royal gardener long before I was born—his thumb was the greenest in the kingdom, and he knew every flower, every herb, every seed in the castle’s intricate maze of shrubbery, because he had almost certainly planted them. And if not him, then his father had, or his father before him. The Levinas had been Aloriya’s gardeners for generations, and I’d be the next one, destined to prune Their Majesty’s hydrangeas until I died. And sometimes, sure, that thought itched at me in a place I couldn’t scratch. Trapped inside the walls of the royal garden felt safe, while the horizon, where the sun met rolling golden wheat fields, was like a yawning mouth ready to eat me whole.
I didn’t know what was beyond the valley, or past the Greenhills, or what lay beyond the Saferine Sea. I didn’t know if I could belong there. If I could even set foot.
At least here, I knew. My roots were planted, and I was happy.
The Village-in-the-Valley was home.
“Are you sure you want me and Papa at your coronation? Remember the last time Papa was privy to an open bar with elderberry wine,” I reminded, putting the last touch on the last bouquet, and felt rather proud of myself. A dozen purple roses sat in rusted tins across the counter. The tins didn’t matter—they’d be set in crystalline vases at the castle and given to all the dignitaries as a welcome presents. Wen’s late mother loved purple roses; it was a soft dedication to her.
My best friend grinned. “You mean when he lamented the Great Pig Race of the Summerside Year?”
“That one exactly.”
“I love your papa’s stories.”
“That makes one of us.”
She elbowed me in the side. “You like them, too.”
“I like to forget about them, sure.”