“But—”
“Daisy, there’s no time. I can see and hear better in this fog than you can. Besides, you know hiding’s pretty much the only thing I’m good at.” He tried to flash me a smile, but it just looked like he wanted to vomit.
Wen let out a shriek that quaked the trees.
“RUN!” he cried.
The ferocity in his voice made me scramble to my feet, and I took off before Wen could find me again. The fog was thinning, letting a little starlight through, which was lucky, since I’d dropped my torch back in the clearing. Still, I couldn’t see much, and I groped blindly at the limbs and bushes, feeling my way to somewhere.
Anywhere.
Behind me, a toppling tree shook the ground. And then there was a yip, like the sound I had heard years ago, when I’d first found Fox in that hunter’s trap.
Fox was in danger.
And I was running away.
He’d come back, and I was running away.
My feet slowed to a stop. I trembled. I wasn’t brave or strong. Just like when the wood attacked the castle, I was helpless to save Wen, Papa, and the kingdom. I couldn’t save anyone. I had gotten mad at Fox for running away, for being a coward. But who was the coward now?
I’d be a fool if I turned around, I thought.
But at least I’d be a loyal fool.
I pivoted on my heels, my iron knife tight in my free hand, and rushed as quickly as I dared back toward the sounds of shouts and splintering wood. I dodged between trees until the hulking shadow of the bone-eater came into view in the fog. Anwen towered over Fox, her claws bloodied and her teeth bared, snapping and snarling like the feral wolves that sometimes came to the edge of the garden wall.
Kingsteeth, I was going to die.
I pressed the iron knife against my wounded palm and sliced it open once more. Blood pooled in my hand, and I flung it out toward the ground. My blood seeped into the leaves. Saplings shot out of the ground underneath Anwen, growing thick and large as they swirled up into the sky, taking with them the monster she had become.
Fox struggled to his knees. His shirt was dark with blood. There was a gouge in his shoulder, still bleeding, from where Anwen must have raked her claws across him.
“Get up,” I told him, putting his arm around my shoulder and pulling him to his feet. The light of the moon cut through the dissipating fog, giving us just enough light to see. “Come on, please. We can run—can you run?”
He turned his unfocused gaze to me, and my chest tightened. “You . . . run.”
“No.” I held him tighter, if only to prove I wasn’t tempted to leave him behind. Above us, my best friend howled as the trees slowly stopped growing and she had to pick her way down through the thick, thorn-sharp limbs. “Together. We’re in this together.”
His brow furrowed. “But I—”
“Together, Fox.”
I grabbed onto him as tightly as I could, and we ran. There were only fog and trees—an endless expanse of them, it seemed—but I knew there must be an end to it. Voryn had to be near. The river began in the Lavender Mountains, and Voryn was at the beginning of the river—
Or, at least, I hoped.
Against me, Fox groaned. The wound must be serious; sweat beaded on his brow, and his eyes were clouded. But it wasn’t the bleeding that alarmed me.
It was the thin black veins that crept slowly across his skin from the wound.
“It’s the curse,” he told me when he noticed that I was looking. “It’s—it’s in my shoulder. I can feel it.”
“Can I dig it out?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. I remembered my mother’s face, streaked with black roots. I remembered her skin breaking apart, the monster inside emerging like a nightmare from a cocoon. Like how Wen’s face looked, torn and peeling, something monstrous underneath.
His resigned gaze locked to mine. We both knew there wasn’t a cure. He was already as good as dead.
Anwen must have climbed down finally; I could make out her hulking shadow, a few dozen yards behind us, prowling through the thicket. Twigs snapped under her feet, leaves crunching. She was closing the distance between us with ferocious speed, and so I leaned Fox against a nearby tree and did the only thing I could. I threw my hands out, droplets of blood flying off the tips of my fingers, and where they landed, flowers and vines and trees burst to life underneath the decomposing underbrush, rushing up like a wall. She jumped back, eyeing the new growth.
“Daisy!”
I heard Fox’s anguished cry, followed by another monstrous howl. Another bone-eater had burst through the trees behind us, wearing the remains of a beautiful set of robes. As it came in to attack, I stooped to grab a fistful of dirt. An acorn I had scooped up burst into a sapling in my hand, and I lobbed it at the creature. It grew in the air, doubling, tripling in size, and slammed into him with enough force to knock him back.
Two more bone-eaters crept out of the fog, snapping their sharp teeth, red eyes flickering. I could have sworn one looked like Papa, but I told myself it wasn’t. It would make the next part harder.
I threw out my hand once more and blinked the black spots out of my eyes. Flowers gushed from the ground, but the bone-eaters had begun to anticipate my movements. They hurdled the growth before it could block their path. I flung my hand again, thorny bushes spreading across their path, but they just began to pick their way through them. When they got through the briars, they would tear us to pieces.
Wen came to the head of them, looking at the briars that swirled up between us like a barrier, thorns sharp and flowers bright. She stretched out one of her long, monstrous hands, and her black tongue formed words in her too-wide mouth. “Crown. It is mine!”
“It’s not yours,” I replied.
She snarled. “MINE!”
Suddenly, there was another roar in the fog, loud, thundering, and deep, and the sound of a heavy creature moving fast through the wood followed.
An ancient.
The bone-eaters inched toward us. I held on to Fox tighter. His breath was labored against my collarbone, and I felt him jerk in my grip, convulsing. If he turned into a monster now, he would shred me in two before the others even got their claws on me.
The roaring shadow came closer, galloping faster than the bone-eater. Out of the fog, I began to make out a shape—
Round ears and large paws and gray fur.
Vala.
Her eyes caught the silver moonlight as she came out of the fog and grabbed me by the shirt with her teeth, flinging first me and then Fox onto her back. I gripped her fur with one hand, my other around Fox so he wouldn’t slip off.
Anwen reached for me, her long claws catching the edge of my braid, but I slammed my foot against her and knocked her away. She gave a cry of pain as she fell back, writhing, into the wood.
I hoped she was okay.
Vala ran until the fog began to clear, and the moon broke once again through the corkscrew trees, and her fur was slick with sweat. After what must have been fifteen minutes, she slowed to a walk. Fox struggled to sit up, and I helped him get one leg over her back. It took all of his energy. His eyes were dull, their topaz darkening like ink dripped onto gold. It shivered me to the bone.
“Let me off here,” he gasped. “I can walk. . . .”
In reply, I grabbed his hands and pulled them around my waist. His left hand, the one closest to his wound, was already a strange purple, like a bruise, and his claws were long and gnarled. His muscles twitched and shifted beneath the skin of his arm, as if they were changing, and his fingers played across the leafy gold of the crown at my waist. He could’ve taken it then, and for a breathless moment I thought he was going to, but then he clenched his fist and curled his arms around my waist.
I held fast, too.
“You stupid, stupid fox,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”
“You said I was a coward. I had to prove you wrong,” he replied with a pitiful laugh.
“I shouldn’t have said those things. I was just . . . I was letting my anger out on you when I was angry with myself. I’m the coward.”
He sighed and pressed his forehead against my back. “You’re stronger than you think.”
A knot formed in my throat. “We’ll find a way to help you. We’ll do something. Once we get to Voryn—”
“Cerys.”
It was the first time he’d ever said my name, and it made my breath catch in my throat. The end must be closer than I feared. I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying and held tighter to his hands around my stomach. He gave a long sigh and leaned fully against me, his face pressed into my loosely braided hair.
Vala walked in silence. She must have known the way to Voryn, but I couldn’t begin to think how she could’ve found Fox and me in that fog.
After a while, Fox mumbled something.
I glanced over my shoulder, and he looked at me from under his long dark eyelashes. His eyes were still that milky, filmy white. “What was that?”
“You don’t stink,” he said softly. “I lied. Before. When I said that. You smell like . . . daisies.”
That took me off guard. “Oh.”
“It reminds me of . . .” His voice trailed off, either because of the curse or something else, I didn’t know. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into my hair again. “I like daisies.”
Oh no, he was being truthful. The curse must’ve addled his brain. I gave a small laugh. “I’ll make you a daisy crown when we get to Voryn.”
“I’d like that.” Then, quieter, “I don’t want to become a monster.”
“I don’t want you to, either.”
The silence that fell was terrible and foreboding. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes later before Fox made a sound I couldn’t describe. It wasn’t human or animal. He shoved his face hard into my back. I quickly glanced down at his hands. Now his other had been taken by the strange black roots, and they bulged out of his skin, throbbing.
My heart skipped.
“Vala—quickly!” I cried, and the bear took off at a gallop again. I hung on to her silver fur, my other around Fox’s arms. His hands grew strange and knobbed in my grip. I could feel the muscles underneath his skin shift, his bones popping, his hands tightening into fists.