But if my blood could heal the woodcurse . . .
“Daisy! Get away from him!” I heard Fox cry as he raced across the garden to me.
The flowers and moss that had been growing from Seren’s wound hadn’t been hurting him—they had been bringing him back, fighting the curse. Saving his life.
Quickly, I pressed the back of my bleeding hand against Seren’s once-flowered shoulder. Little sprigs of green peeked out from his charred wound, growing into bloom once again. It spread like moss over a stone across part of his chest and burrowed deep. The wood had taken so many things.
I didn’t want it to take him, too.
I curled my fingers into the moss and willed harder, because I knew Seren. Not this Seren, corpse dry and twisted, but the Seren before. The Seren who wanted to become a knight, who walked me home from the castle every evening, who taught Anwen how to ride a horse, who ran into the cursed wood after his charge, knowing he might die.
He had to be there still—somewhere—under all this rot.
The truth was: If he had wanted to kill me back at the cottage, he could have. He had seen us. And again when he and Fox met in the wood. He could have killed Fox. He could have killed me here.
He didn’t—and I refused to let him leave again.
White flowers bloomed across his shoulder, opening wide with bright yellow hearts. His body jerked. His eyes flew open wide—and he gasped, his strange white eyes focusing on me. “Why?” he wheezed, and then winced, bringing a hand to his chest where my flowers grew.
“Because we all have a promise to keep,” I replied, and stood, letting the guards come and draw Seren to his feet. As they handcuffed him, Vala came over to me and planted her head against my chest, as if to tell me I’d done a good job.
I thanked her quietly and took the crown from her mouth. It was still warm, and it pulsed gently, enthralling.
Fox ran up to me, and before I could tell what he was doing, he pulled me into a hug. “Fox—you’re squishing me!”
“I was so worried,” he replied, releasing me and holding me at arm’s length. “You aren’t hurt, are you? That diseased sack of bones didn’t do anything?” And when I shook my head, he gave a visible sigh. “I should’ve gone with you.”
“You didn’t know,” I replied, and caught sight of the Grandmaster standing at the entrance to the garden, stone-faced and rigid. It was clear through Seren that the crown had something to do with the curse—with Her. The Lady. I wasn’t going to be played for a fool anymore. I held up the crown and said, “I know you’re keeping something from me. Tell me everything you know about the crown.” She took a deep breath. “And the curse.”
Because I was no longer that scared girl on the edge of the Wildwood, unable to save her friends.
I would save them this time.
The Grandmaster inclined her head. “I have told you all that I know—”
“Liar,” I snapped.
At my venom, Petra, who stood beside the Grandmaster, reached for her sword at her hip, but the Grandmaster held up her hand. Petra stood down.
“I saw the tapestry in your office,” I went on. “I saw the maps. I know you know more than you’re letting on.”
“So you were snooping about? After I gave you food and shelter?”
“You lied to me!”
“You didn’t ask the right questions,” the Grandmaster replied sharply. “And why should we tell you anything? Your entire kingdom left us to rot. Shouldn’t we leave your kingdom to the same fate?”
“Don’t you want to end the curse?” I snarled in reply, clenching my fists together. “I know my kingdom left you. I know I perpetuated the same stories, lived in the same golden glow of the crown—never asking questions. I know. And I want to fix it. I want to try. Just help us end this curse. Please, Grandmaster.”
Because for so long I’d thought that the crown only protected Aloriya from the ancients and the bone-eaters and the woodcurse, but now I was beginning to suspect that the crown had something to do with it. Why else would the wood command Seren to take the crown? Why would the ancient magic of the Wildwood need the crown in the first place?
And why was there never talk of the woodcurse before the crown?
They were questions I should’ve been asking before, but my ears had been filled with stories that were lies.
The Grandmaster inclined her head, and then she motioned for me to follow her. She turned and went into the fortress again, but as I started to follow her, Fox stopped me.
“Daisy, I don’t like this. How do you know she’ll tell the truth now?”
I hesitated. “Because if she doesn’t, she’s dooming her own city. Because Seren failed, the wood will send more monsters. Bone-eaters. Ancients. I know she knows that. These walls have only held because the fog kept the curse away.”
Fox pursed his lips, because he still didn’t like my answer.
I kissed Fox on the cheek. “Thank you for worrying about me.”
He let go of me in surprise. “I—um—yeah, of course.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a blush creeping across his cheeks. “Just—be careful, Daisy.”
“Always.” I smiled at him, and his cheeks seemed to get even redder, and he looked away in embarrassment.
I left Vala to look after Fox in the garden, and I followed the Grandmaster into the fortress and down the long and dizzying halls back to her office again. She let me inside first and closed the door behind her. I didn’t realize we were alone until I turned back to her, and she closed the door. I tightened my grip on the crown.
Slowly, she circled around me, toward her desk, and began in a matter-of-fact tone, “When the Lady of the Wilds ruled the wood, there was no crown. Your King Sunder razed his path to the heart of the wood, where the Lady held her court, and when he returned, he had a glorious golden crown and the Lady was gone. As he left, a great fog settled over Voryn. The roots of the wood turned bitter, the flowers poisonous, and the old gods rotted. We hadn’t protected our Lady, and so the forest would. The only way it could—with a curse.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “The Lady of the Wilds is gone?”
“Gone. For three hundred years.” The Grandmaster leaned back on the front of her desk, looking older than she had just a few hours before. “So—what do you think I thought when you came into my city with the last of our Lady’s old gods, King Sunder’s crown, and blood that could break the woodcurse? The last visitor we had destroyed our lives and left us here to die. I didn’t trust you at all—but now I see I don’t have a choice. That thing—”
“Seren,” I corrected.
She glowered at me. “Came from the wood. It found its way through the fog. Over the wall. Into my office, and if I wanted to be thick, I would ask why you and he were here at the exact same time, but you wouldn’t have risked your life to stop him if you were working together. And you did risk your life for this city—whether or not that was your intention.” She pushed off the edge of her desk and rounded it, opening one of the drawers. She took out a yellowed piece of parchment and presented it on the desk. It was a map—old and gnarled. “You were correct in your assumptions; I haven’t been honest with you.”
I came closer, looking down at a strangely detailed map. It showed mountains and rivers and valleys, but it also showed areas where ancients prowled, and near the center of the forest, just past Voryn, was a clearing drawn in a perfect circle.
The Grandmaster tapped her forefinger on it. “It stands to reason that returning the crown from whence it came will reverse the curse—by taking it to the heart of the wood, where the Lady once held her court, perhaps you’ll find where she went. But you aren’t the first one to try to break the woodcurse. My daughter once set out, and she failed.” The old woman paused and shook her head. “It is dangerous. Impossible, even. And only a Grandmaster or their apprentice knows the way, and I swore to myself I would never send another of mine out on this fool’s errand—”
“But I’m no fool, Grandmaster” came the voice of Petra from the door. I glanced back, surprised she’d come in so quietly. She closed the door behind her and gave a small bow. “Let me lead her to the heart of the wood. I know the way.”
The Grandmaster’s lips pursed into a thin line. “Absolutely not.”
“Then I’ll go without your permission,” Petra replied. “You saw that monster in the garden, Grandmaster. More will be coming. The fog is weakening.”
“Or the wood is growing stronger,” I whispered, my fingers curling tighter around the crown. I knew this was the kind of sacrifice I shouldn’t be letting her make, but I didn’t know the way to the heart of the wood. “Thank you,” I said softly.
Petra gave a simple nod. “We didn’t believe you at first. That was our mistake.”
“You go and you will die, Petra,” the Grandmaster said through clenched teeth.
“We shall see,” replied her apprentice, before turning and leaving the office once more. The Grandmaster stood there, visibly shaking, her fingers curled into fists. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened. We finally had a set course—somewhere to go, a light at the end of this long tunnel. But to get there, we had to return to the wood, something I wasn’t very keen on.
As I left, the Grandmaster said, “You remind me so much of my daughter. I pray this fool’s errand breaks the curse.”
I did, too.
I tried to sort myself out before I met up with Fox again. This was for the best, I told myself.
This was the only way it could be. Our only hope.
Even if it killed me.
32
A Taste for a Truth
Fox
AS THE GUARDS led Seren to the prisons and Daisy left with the Grandmaster, I had to find something to do, so I went to the kitchens. My heart was still racing. It wasn’t like I could just go to sleep now, not after Daisy had almost died—again.