I wanted to forget it all. I missed being a fox. I missed the wood being a place I could roam, rather than a place to fear.
. . . But it was no longer home.
I just wished I knew what to do—
A bloom of pain lit just behind my eyes, and I massaged my temples to try to alleviate it—
“C’mon, I want to show you something!”
I glanced over, the pain so bright I could barely keep my eyes open. There were two hazy figures on the other side of the rampart, small looking, childlike. A boy who had just spoken, and a girl with a flower crown on her head.
The boy climbed up onto the ledge and glanced back to the girl, outstretching his hand to her. “C’mon! The sun’s about to rise!”
The girl seemed nervous. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here. Papa said the towers were forbidden.”
“But I’m a prince. If you get in trouble, I’ll save you.”
The girl hesitated. Their words were too loud in my ears, and I clamped my hands over them to try to keep the sounds out—until I realized they were inside my head. “Don’t you trust me?”
The pain crawled through my head like a wildfire, and I had to lean against the side of the rampart to keep my knees from going out. “Kids, get away from there,” I called weakly.
They ignored me.
“I trust you,” the girl replied after some hesitation, and took him by the hand.
Were they going to stand on the edge of the rampart? I reached out to try to stop them. “Wait—stop. Stop, it’s dangerous!”
The girl turned back—honey hair and hazel eyes—and I stared at her in surprise.
Daisy?
“Wait, don’t go.” I reached out my hand as I fought against the searing pain in my head. Blackness ate the edges of my vision.
“C’mon,” said the foolish boy, “we’re about to miss the sunrise!” Then he stepped off the ledge, and she went with him.
“NO—STOP!” I caught myself before I tumbled over the side of the rampart after them, but there was no one at the bottom.
They had just . . . disappeared.
“This area is off-limits.” A voice startled me out of my thoughts, and I glanced over my shoulder. A young woman with short raven-black hair stood, a hand on the dragon-headed hilt of her sword. Her wooden leg ticked against the stones as she came near. Tick. Tick. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’re Lady Cerys’s . . . friend.”
I turned to her, trying to shake off the vision. “Voryn’s in trouble. There’s a man—he’s broken into the Grandmaster’s chamber and—”
“You’re the one who was woodcursed,” she interrupted. The grip on her hilt tightened; her shoulders straightened. I didn’t have to be a fox to recognize when I wasn’t wanted somewhere. “You might be calling to them now.”
“What? No—”
I heard the sing of her sword through the air, and I dodged to the left. The blade struck against the stone wall of the rampart, sparks hissing.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I cried, throwing my hands up in surrender. “I’m not here to—”
“You should be dead!” she snarled. “Why are you out here? Where’s your guard?”
I yipped as I barely dodged the next attack. “You have to listen to me! It’s the crown—it’s missing. But I didn’t take it.”
“Lies.” She pointed the tip of her blade at me, and I slowly began to back away down the rampart, my hands still up in surrender. “The city walls have never been breached. You are the first outsiders to enter Voryn in ages. The first woodcursed.”
“Do I look woodcursed to you?” I retorted. “I’m human.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized what I had just said and put my fingers to my lips. Human. I was a human. I wasn’t a wild thing that hid behind Daisy’s legs.
I was human.
She sneered at that and raised her sword to attack again. I could either leap off the side of the rampart—into the city twenty feet below—or get skewered by a pretty sword. I had decided on the twenty-foot drop when a sharp voice came from behind me.
“Petra.”
It was so cold it chilled me to the bone. Coming up the stairs to the rampart was the Grandmaster, still in her white ceremonial robe from the wedding in the night market. “Let him be.”
“But, Grandmaster, he’s—”
“As much as I dislike him, he’s telling the truth. Someone has stolen the crown, and it isn’t he,” replied the old woman. Her gaze lingered on me long enough to tell me that she liked me about as much as she liked bone-eaters—probably less, to be honest. But I had come with Daisy, and that, for some reason, kept me safe.
The young woman—Petra—said to me, “You told me you knew who took the crown. Tell us. Now.”
Still shaken from the headache, I said, “I’m glad you finally believe me. We saw him take the crown, but we lost him in the fortress. Daisy went one way, and I . . .” Fear lodged the words in my throat. Oh no. If I hadn’t found him, then . . . “Daisy. We have to find her. Now!”
31
A Garden of Ashes
Cerys
WHEN I FOUND the first guard in the east wing, I thought he was dead—but he was just unconscious. He wasn’t even woodcursed. It seemed like Seren hadn’t had time to plant a seed in his escape. This also meant he was getting farther away with the crown the longer I lingered on each guard to check to see if they were alive.
They became like a bread trail to follow, out of the east wing of the fortress and into a garden that reminded me too much of the royal garden of Aloriya. Honeysuckles crawled up the walls, reaching out to willow trees that grew against the edges. There were wildflowers in pots and, spread across the ground, fat orchids and endover lilies and other flora I’d only seen in one other place before: the corner of Papa’s garden, where my mother had planted the strange Wildwood seeds.
And that’s where I found him. At the far side of the garden, his back to me, he was judging the wall to see if he could scale it.
“Seren,” I called.
He spun around, surprised I’d said his name. In his grip was the crown. His hands shook as he held it, his eyes wide—as if he was scared. Of me? “Why can’t you just give up?” he snapped. “You’re so much more annoying than you were back then.”
That made me pause. So he did remember. I put my hands up slowly, in a calming motion, to show him I wasn’t armed—I wasn’t someone he should be afraid of. I’d seen Papa do it to our horse, Gilda, when something spooked her.
“Seren”—I repeated his name because it seemed to draw his attention to me—“you know you don’t want to do this.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ve little choice. The wood demands it. You . . . you can’t understand.”
Demands? “But why does it want the crown so badly?”
“Because it wants to do to you what your kingdom did to her.”
Her? The Lady? I didn’t understand—but I knew that if he wore the crown, something terrible would happen. He couldn’t wear it—like I couldn’t. I hesitantly offered my hand, taking a step closer. “Seren, please. You can explain it all to me. Just—just give me the crown. . . .”
“And what do you think’ll happen when I do?” he asked, backing up against the garden wall. “Will you grow some more flowers on me? Turn me into a pretty bouquet?” He motioned to the flowers sprouting from his shoulder. They bled down half of his chest, swirling with green moss and leaves. The wound Fox had inflicted back at the cottage. “I have to do what the wood asks. I must. Because you left me in the wood to die in the first place.”
“Do . . . do you think I didn’t want to look for you?” My voice wavered, because hadn’t that been the same thought that rebounded in my head for years? “Did you think I didn’t lie awake every night hating myself for surviving when you and my mother and Lorne—when you all died?”
“You still don’t know, do you.” It wasn’t a question, but then he shook his head anyway, dismissing the thought. “It doesn’t matter.”
He raised the crown to his head, his hands shaking.
“Seren—no!”
But it was too late.
A strange ripple passed through the garden, like a pebble tossed into a river—a wave of magic that distorted everything around us. The flowers turned their heads toward him. The trees leaned in.
I stared in horror as the flowers on his chest began to wither, turning brown and then black with rot. They shriveled, the edges of their petals turning orange as if they were—burning. As if he were burning, from the inside out. It was like watching whatever was left of his life being sucked out of him.
And through it all, Seren was screaming.
I felt the ground shift beneath my feet, and roots sprang up and twined around my legs so I couldn’t move. I cursed, trying to rip the roots away, but every time I did, more came, faster and faster, twisting up my legs. One sliced the back of my uninjured hand, and I quickly covered it so I wouldn’t feed the dark plants my blood.
“Seren!” I cried above the strange roar of the magic. “Take it off! Take it off before you die!”
He looked at me with eyes that were as white as clouds, wide and pain stricken and terrified. “They are coming, and no one can stop them—”
Suddenly, a blur of gray rushed through the garden and tackled Seren to the ground. Vala pulled the crown off him, baring her teeth.
The garden quieted.
I tore the roots from my feet and ran toward them. Behind me, Fox shouted my name, rushing into the garden with a cadre of guards, but I was already dropping to kneel beside Seren. I ran my fingers along the rotted wildflowers on his shoulder. He truly looked like a corpse, broken and pale and forgotten, and I could finally see the extent of the woodcurse in him. It was visible beneath his paper-thin skin, deeper than the wound he’d gotten all those years ago in the wood. He must have been woodcursed before he died. The curse suspended him somewhere between life and death, controlling him, biding its time until the king had died, and then the wood sent Seren into the Village-in-the-Valley.