I was alone.
There was nothing else I could do. Except . . .
My grip on the crown tightened, and I turned my gaze up to Seren. What was left of him. “I’m sorry.”
Then I placed the crown on my head.
“NO!” he cried, but a deep melodic sound filled my ears. The smell of magic—sweet and heavy—flooded my senses. The moment the crown touched my brow, the fear that had burrowed its way into my bones vanished. There was nothing to be afraid of with the crown on. There was nothing left to feel at all.
Seren reeled back. “You stupid g—”
I reached out my hands, and the world obeyed me. Vines burst out of the ground around us, climbing up the stones of the castle, as thick as tree trunks. They reached toward the parapets, curling around them, covering the walls, the doors, the windows, swirling up to claim the castle and everyone inside.
I was lost in the power. Drunk with it. Filled to the brim and overflowing. It was mine. It would always be mine. Wen might’ve been a queen, but I would be a god—
An orange blur leaped out of the bushes at me and snagged the crown off my head. I fell to my knees, gasping as the magic was wrenched from my blood and bones, scraped away like a scab not yet healed, and left me raw underneath. And I realized what I had done. I had commanded the ground and all that grew from it.
It was terrifying.
Dizzy and disoriented, I scrambled after the fox.
Seren jerked himself upright and jabbed a finger toward the animal. “Get that fox!” he snarled. The bone-eaters gave chase.
Even though I didn’t have the crown anymore, the vines that I brought forth still twisted and grew, twining themselves across the castle grounds, braiding into a vast thicket of briars no one could get through, until the entire Sundermount was wrapped in this prison of thorns.
I ran toward the edge of the grounds where the wall met the wood. The sound of the forest was so loud it rattled my bones. My heart thundered in my ears as I tripped over a root, catching myself on the ground, fingers digging into the loosening earth, as the man pursued, shouting at me to stop.
The fox leaped through a damaged portion of the wall, and I dived after him, down into the trees and into the deep darkness of the Wildwood.
I slipped on the embankment, tumbling down the steep side of the Sundermount, tangling through the underbrush. I tried to grapple for something—anything—to slow my fall—
I slammed against a tree, and darkness swallowed me whole.
7
A Blood-Broken Curse
Cerys
SOMETHING COLD NUDGED against my cheek.
I groaned and curled my knees up to my chest. I was shivering, and my head pounded. The cold, wet thing bumped against my cheek again, followed by a high-pitched whine.
Five more minutes. I could sleep just a bit more, and then Papa would—
Papa.
I remembered: the coronation in the royal garden, the strange cursed seeds, Seren, the crown—
I woke up with a gasp, rolling out of a thicket of roots, clawing myself out of the mud. My lungs burned; my head spun. I coughed, my mouth tasting like soil and rocks. I wiped the sludge out of my eyes and stumbled to stand, my feet sinking into the soft upturned earth. Thick, tall trees towered around me like a wall, thunder clouds rumbling overhead. The trees groaned in a quiet wind, creaking like ancient bones. I was in the Wildwood, and with that realization my hands began to tremble. I pressed them against my mouth, backing up against a thick tree trunk, darting my eyes around the darkness, waiting for the bone-eaters to spring out and eat me.
The Sundermount towered high behind me, the castle like a shard of broken bone on its peak. From here, it didn’t look like something horrific had happened, but I knew Aloriya was in danger—
And I had put on the crown.
The crown! With a gasp, I began to search the ground. That was when a flash of orange caught my eye. The fox was sitting, his tail wrapped around his paws, looking at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to hurry up.
Beside him was the golden crown, the moonlight catching in its yellow leaves.
I remembered the way its power pulsed through me, the sickening lull of it. I had lost myself in it. I had felt . . . invincible.
It was wrong.
With shaking figures, I picked it up, half expecting it to ensnare me again, but it didn’t. The metal was cold and heavy in my hands. A thin line of blood eased down my arm from a cut.
Why hadn’t the woodcurse taken me, too? I didn’t understand it. The seeds that had latched onto and burrowed into everyone at the coronation, that had turned them into bone-eaters . . . one had shriveled in my hand. Was it a part of my magic?
Was . . . was I the only one left?
Suddenly, the fox’s ears whirled around and he jerked his head in the direction of the darkness, as if he heard something. I pushed myself off from the tree, straining my ears to hear it, too.
It was the sound of footsteps crunching in the underbrush. Slow and heavy.
The fur on the fox’s back stood on end, and he bared his teeth. With the noise came soft white tendrils of fog, slowly inching over the gnarled roots of ancient trees. And through the fog, in the distance, came a hulking figure, sliding between the flashes of lightning overhead. The blue-white light gleamed off a bone-white skull, reminding me of the carcass of a deer, or the head of the dragon mounted in the trophy hall of the castle.
My heart stopped. The bone-eater was looking right at me—thirty feet away, and creeping closer. Its paws treaded across the leaves in soft and heavy crunches, languid, as if it was prowling, taking its time.
Enjoying the hunt.
Its hair, what was left of it, was a brilliant yellow, like woven gold.
The color of Anwen’s hair.
Suddenly, the fox gave an awful, ear-piercing shriek. The sound startled me out of my stupor, and I wiped the line of blood off my arm and dug my hand into the dirt, fingers sprawling across the woodland seeds beneath. Roots began to churn and squirm, and saplings sprouted from the ground, swirling up between the bone-eater and me, hiding me from view.
I scrambled to my feet, hoping that gave me some time, and took off running after the fox. I vaulted over roots and overturned trees, forest limbs tearing at my dress and picking at the knots in my hair.
The fog swirled thicker, clouds of white against dark tree trunks, as the creature barreled after us, tossing young saplings and thick logs out of the way like they were toothpicks. I took another swipe of my blood from my arm and ran my hand along leaves I could reach and hanging moss and vines, and they spread and grew like a greenhouse in motion. I glanced back when I shouldn’t have, to see how much distance the monster had gained, and my foot snagged on an upturned root. I pitched forward.
I didn’t hit the ground immediately. With a yell, I fell through a thicket of leaves, tumbled down a small ravine, and slammed into the ground at the bottom with enough force to knock the wind out of me. I bit my tongue to mute a gasp, my head spinning.
The crown went rolling out of my grip and into the underbrush, and there it lay quietly.
The sound of the bone-eater lingered at the edge of the ravine as it sniffed in the bushes. It stood there for what seemed like an age, and I felt my head beginning to spin with a lack of air, but just as I was about to give up and gasp for breath, the creature turned and prowled away. With that, the fog slowly began to dissipate.
My heart beat in my ears two—three, four—more times before I made myself take a controlled, quiet breath. My lungs burned as I sucked in air between my teeth and pressed my face against the damp ground. I wanted to cry. To go home.
But there was no home to go back to. Anwen and Papa and everyone I loved was . . . they were . . .
They were monsters.
They were the ones chasing me now.
The wood couldn’t take the crown. That corpse—Seren, but not, never would be again—couldn’t have it. I was just a gardener; I didn’t have royal blood or the magic of the Sunders, but I had to keep it from them somehow.
I had no choice.
Slowly, testing myself, I sat up. My arm was still bleeding from the scrape, and where it had touched a tiny weed, the plant flowered into beautiful yellow blooms. But I was otherwise uninjured, if I didn’t pay attention to my pounding headache. Gingerly, I got to my feet and fetched the crown. I untied my sash in the middle, looped the crown into it, and retied the sash tighter so it wouldn’t come loose. Then I inspected where I had fallen. A cloud moved away from the moon, and light poured down into the clearing. There was a little abandoned cottage on the other side, about fifty yards away, all the windows dark and the chimney cold. How old could it be? Perhaps fifty, a hundred years old? But no one had lived in the wood for three hundred years.
Or so I’d always been told.
The fog had not come down here, eerily enough. Another shudder of thunder rumbled the trees.
I heard a whimper and glanced down to the fox. He tried to stand but fell back into the leaves again, licking his front paw.
Cursing under my breath, I gently scooped him up into my arms.
I had to hide somewhere in case that monster returned—if I stood out here in the clearing, I would be a sitting duck. Maybe there was something in the abandoned cottage to wrap my bleeding arm. Hesitantly, I started toward it.
The fox whined again, and I hugged him tighter to my chest. The closer I got, I noticed that one of the windows was broken, and the roof was caved in, in places; the fence surrounding the garden was rotted, and the garden soil was as dry as dust. So no one lived here after all.
As I peered into the window, something moved in the reflection of the glass. Broad and hulking. I whirled around on my heels.
A bear, as big as a horse, stood on the other side of the clearing. She was the color of gray skies, her eyes reflecting the moonlight like silvery disks. She stared at me for a moment longer, breathing loudly through her mouth. Then her lips pulled back to show rows of fierce teeth, and she charged at me.
I screamed and clung tightly to the fox, curling my fingers into his fur as he shifted and wiggled, bracing for the bear attack. I must’ve squeezed too tightly because he bit me, his teeth sinking deep into my hand. I gave a cry of pain and dropped him.
There was a sound, like a harsh wind through the trees and the pop of bones and the snarl of a beast.