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.
I threw my hands up to shield my face, waiting for the bear to tear me to ribbons—but nothing happened. Fearfully, I lowered my arms to see why I wasn’t dead, and in front of me was a person. He held the bear back, paws to hands. The young man’s skin twisted and rippled, and I watched every muscle in his back heave as he threw the bear away.
The creature snarled as it stumbled backward, baring its rows and rows of deadly teeth.
“Oh, calm down, you beast. . . . We’ve had a rough night,” the young man said to the bear, massaging his shoulder. He seemed to grow taller and broader by the moment, until he was half a head above me, lean and sculpted like the guards Wen and I watched training out in the yards some summers.
And then I realized—quite suddenly—that he was naked.
I squeaked.
He must’ve heard me, because he turned around, his back to the bear. A knot formed in my throat. Oh, he was handsome. Sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw and eyes a golden amber that reminded me of autumn. His hair was long and wild, the color of orange sunrises. I’d never seen hair that color before.
I pressed my back against the abandoned cottage, anxiety tightening like a knot in my throat.
His eyebrows furrowed as he noticed how frightened I was. Then he looked down at his hands, his fingers thin, tapering off to black-tipped claws.
The color drained from his face. “Oh.”
8
Monster of a Different Kind
Fox
I WAS . . .
I was a . . .
My hand opened and closed. It was fleshy and long fingered and wrong. This wasn’t happening to me. This couldn’t be happening to me. I turned my hands the other way, and the hands in front of me turned.
The girl stared at me like I was wrong. I was wrong. This was a dream—a nightmare—some sort of terror I’d wake up from in a few minutes and . . .
I touched my mouth, the remnants of her blood sweet on my lips. I had words. I thought them. Sounds braided together like ivy inching up a wall, forming stories and meanings. Meaning I was—that I’d become . . .
Black spots danced in my vision—the world was so bright, too bright, and too colorful, and too quiet, and—
And—
9
The Silent House
Cerys
THE YOUNG MAN’S eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell on the ground between the bear and me. He wasn’t dead—he was still breathing, at least, but he was very much out. And he was the only thing between me and the bear, who inclined her head and sniffed the air.
There was a howl in the wood, and an unkindness of ravens took flight into the night. The bone-eater. I couldn’t let it find me again.
But where was the fox?
I spun around to the bear in alarm. “Spit him out!” I hissed, ready to cut the bear open and wrench the fox out of her. “He’s my friend! He didn’t do anything to you. He—”
The bone-eater howled. It was even closer than before. So close the sound made me tremble. In the wood beyond, something large moved through the underbrush. Big and hulking.
Stalking toward the clearing.
The bear moved around me. She took the strange boy’s foot gently in her jaw and dragged him into the cottage, making sure to hit every root and doorjamb on the way. I didn’t have time to find the fox, assuming that the bear hadn’t actually eaten him. I hoped he had gotten away and was okay somewhere.
The trees shifted, the bone-eater prowling close.
I closed the cottage door softly and locked it as the creature came into the clearing. Golden hair, the shredded pieces of Anwen’s beautiful coronation dress hanging in tatters on its bony, spiked spine.
I crawled quietly away from the door and hid underneath the window as I heard it come closer. On the other side of the abandoned cottage, away from the view of windows, were the bear and the stranger, mostly hidden in shadows. I couldn’t get over there without giving myself away. I was trapped. The creature outside sniffed at the bottom of the door—and pushed on it. The latch rattled but kept.