“Very well,” she said. “I will take you to your companion.”
The entirety of Voryn was carved from the mountainside; every building was chiseled from the rock face in crisp detail, and I could hardly believe that such a thing was possible. It must have taken hundreds of years to sculpt a city like this, and as half a dozen Voryn guards led me out of my room and into the mountain itself, I didn’t know how far it went. I just swallowed the pain in my side and followed the old woman down into the depths of the stone city, staircase after staircase, until we reached the damp bottom, where the prison was located. There was an open square, and then a line of cells at the other end. A torch sat outside each one, but there was only one occupied.
The woman, who was probably a seneschal herself, or a high-ranking soldier since the guards obeyed her, said, “Your companion is there.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat and walked down to the cell to which she was pointing.
There was no mistaking it; it was Fox and yet . . . not.
“May I have some time alone?” I asked the woman.
She inclined her head, debating. She must have realized I couldn’t cause any harm and stood no chance of freeing him. I could barely walk without wincing from the pain. The stairs had been brutal. “Very well. Five minutes. Say your goodbyes.”
The guards left on her order, and soon I was the only one remaining in this strange underground courtyard prison. I rubbed the gauze on my wounded hand and turned to face the dark cell.
Fox shifted and looked up. He was a shadow in the corner of his cell, but his eyes caught the firelight, shining like disks of moonlight. I took another step closer. He pushed himself farther into the corner, his arms wrapped around himself.
The woodcurse had taken my mother, leaving nothing of the person I had known. The same could be said for Anwen. I didn’t entertain the hope that Fox was still in there.
The shadow shifted again, the chains that bound him rustling. But then, quietly—quivering—I heard my name. “. . . Daisy?” His voice was strange and pained, like the syllables were hard to form.
I curled my fingers around the bars of the cell. “Fox, you’re still alive!”
He didn’t say anything beyond a low moan. Think—I had to do something. He wasn’t gone yet. And I couldn’t lose him. I didn’t know what I would do without Fox, and for the moment there was still a piece of him left.
Maybe a piece was enough.
My fingers shook as I began to unwrap my wounded hand.
When my blood had touched the ancient, life had taken over the monster’s body, destroying the creature and leaving nothing but a withered tree behind. But when it touched flowers, it made them bloom. It turned a fox into a man, and it trapped a castle in briars and thorns.
Before the curse came to Aloriya, I had thought I understood my magic. In truth, I knew nothing about it.
But I knew, whatever the cost, I wouldn’t let Fox burn.
“Fox,” I called again, reaching out my hand.
As he stepped slowly out of the shadows of the cell and into the torchlight, every bone in my body wanted to run from there and never look back. Fox looked so much like my mother had, like Anwen had, skin cracking as something terrible began to emerge from beneath. My heart thundered in my ears, because I could see my mother again, standing in the sun-drenched doorway, no longer my mother at all but something that ate and ate and never had its fill. I had been helpless then, like I was helpless now, standing in front of this bone-eater, unable to stop the curse from festering inside. Rotting black roots crossed over his cheeks, curling up around his eyes. He looked like he was drowning in the darkness.
All I could hear was Fox telling me that he didn’t want to become a monster. And it was my fault that it was happening now. If my blood could make wilting flowers bloom, and foxes into men, maybe it could . . .
He stepped up to the cell bars, and I placed my wounded hand on his cheek. His skin felt feverish to the touch, but I didn’t pull away, even as I knew what he would do.
His yellow eyes widened, his lips pulling into a snarl because, oh, he was hungry. His turned his head toward my hand, his lips brushing across my bleeding stitches.
Oh, kingsteeth, he looked like he could tear me apart.
I steeled myself and said, “Bite me, you stupid fox.”
His voice sounded like boots treading upon dead leaves. “Daisy—”
“Trust me.” Then as I held my hand up to him, hoping that I wasn’t wrong, the last bit of white in his eyes blackened to an inky, terrible abyss, and he opened his mouth to show me rows of sharp, terrible teeth.
And then he bit down to the bone.
22
Sweeter Than Sorrow
Fox
I WANTED TO grind my teeth through her. I wanted to tear her flesh off her bone. I wanted to snap her fingers between my teeth. I wanted—
I wanted . . .
I . . .
She ground her teeth in pain, her eyes bright with tears, and the hunger in me wanted to bite harder, to tear her flesh open and—and—
And . . .
I couldn’t. I was hurting her. And moment by moment, it began to hurt me, too. I loosened my mouth from her hand and sucked in a shuddering breath, and the hunger unhooked its grip, and I tasted her on my tongue. I knew the flavor, from before. The world came back into focus. Honey-bronze hair and a constellation of freckles across her heart-shaped face and lips, which parted into a smile as if—
As if she was happy to see me.
She smelled so nice, like a field of wildflowers, and—a dream. Of running through the Wilds, daisies underfoot, someone pulling my hand. The sun was bright through the trees, but even so, the wood was dark, and there was a sound behind us. It tore through the underbrush, snarling and snapping, and still the woman didn’t let go.
“Hurry,” she said as she pulled me through the wood. Her hand was tight around my wrist. “We can’t stop—we mustn’t stop.”
My feet were tired. I wanted to go home. I was crying.
The sound was an ancient, and it caught up to us. I knew it would. Somehow, I had seen this moment before, a hundred times it seemed. It was my fault, what happened next. She spun to me and took me firmly by the shoulders. Her hair was honey and her eyes were hazel, and she looked so familiar. “I need you to hide.”
“What about you?”
“I told my daisy I’d keep you safe—now go!” she cried, shoving me toward a fallen log. I crawled into its hollowed center, my hands pressed tightly over my mouth, to stay quiet—stay safe—no matter what happened—”
“Fox—can you hear me? Fox?” I heard Daisy call through the memory of the forest, and her face faded out of the darkness.
“You . . . you taste sweet,” I murmured, and my knees gave as I fainted.
23
To Please a Grandmaster
Cerys
AS HE FAINTED, I tried to catch him through the bars, but my hand was slippery with blood and my side flared with pain and—and I failed miserably. He slumped across the cold stone floor, and I quickly knelt down and pressed the back of my hand against his mouth and let out a relieved sigh. He was breathing. The roots that had burrowed around his face shriveled, rotted, and turned to ash.
“We’re going to be okay,” I whispered to him. “We made it.”
To Voryn.
We survived the wood.
I leaned against the bars of the prison, cradling my bleeding hand against my stomach. I knew I should’ve been relieved, but there was a knot in the back of my throat—because everything was wrong. This city was wrong.
When the woman came back and saw that Fox was no longer woodcursed, she quickly left again and barked an order at the guards—to detain me.
“Wait—no, stop!”
Three guards grabbed me and forced me to my feet. I didn’t have the energy to fight them off.
“I didn’t do anything!” I fought weakly, trying to wrestle out of their grips, but it was to no avail, and my side ached with pain. I told the woman, “You can’t do this!”
I was a fool.
Of course she could. I was powerless, and this was not the Voryn I’d imagined.
Earlier, as I’d been led to the prisons, I hadn’t wanted to admit it, because I kept tricking myself into thinking that these ornate buildings in this forgotten city of Voryn couldn’t have been made without magic, that these people couldn’t have lasted this long within these walls without some enchanted help—well, the fog was enchanted, I found out later, but very little else was. There were no enchanted weapons. No enchanted lampposts that popped on when night fell, like in Somersal-by-the-Sea, or enchanted armors like the ones in Eriksenburg, or enchanted people.
Fearing me, I guess, they locked me in one of the other empty cells as they dragged Fox away. I didn’t know where, even though I insisted that he was cured, that he wasn’t dangerous. But they didn’t listen to me. So, I sank down to the cold floor, and I waited. Powerless. I didn’t know how long I sat there—long enough for the blood from Fox’s bite to dry—but finally a handful of guards came to get me. As I was led out of the prisons again, toward the fortress at the top of the city, I realized how much of a fool I really was. These denizens were just people. They reminded me so much of the people of Aloriya. They looked like people from Eriksenburg, and Eldervale, and Nor. Had they all gotten lost in the Wildwood and found their way here? Or had their ancestors been in the city since the curse?
The city was beautiful, each building ornate and old, but it was gray and quiet and . . . hopeless. I imagined—I don’t rightly know what I imagined, but it wasn’t this. The Sundermount looked like the sun against the grayness of Voryn. There were stone creatures perched at the edges of the rooftops and carved across the trim work in the old stone buildings. The wallpapers inside the buildings were old, as were the furniture and decorations, as if Voryn itself had been trapped in a bubble of time hundreds of years back, or at least trapped in the stuffy, unused halls of Castle Sunder. And the citizens of Voryn had this look in their eyes when they caught a glimpse of me—I could feel the animosity at the back of my neck, jealousy and bitterness intertwined. Like people trapped.