It took me a moment to react. “. . . What?”
“You and your papa both—I want you with me up on the terrace, not hiding in the back by the garden wall. You’re both family to me. I can’t imagine starting my reign as queen without you. You . . . you’re the only one who really understands.” Her gaze turned hesitantly to the edge of the Wilds, the line of soft green trees that looked innocent, a mask for the curse within. “If I didn’t have you in my life . . . I’d be alone.”
But if I weren’t in your life, your brother might still be alive, I thought before I could catch myself.
Wen smiled hesitantly. “Will you? Please?”
It was an honor, not to mention a breaking of tradition. Only those most important to the royal bloodline were allowed on the coronation steps with the anointed, and my papa and I were simple gardeners. We didn’t command countries or save villages from disaster. We tended to flowers. We helped them bloom.
Anwen was asking me to be one of those most important people—and my heart swelled at the thought. I wanted to cry.
But when I looked back into her eyes, I could only see the wood, as it surrounded us all those years ago. On the day she and I survived.
2
The Wildwood Knocks
Cerys
ON THE DAY my mother died, there was a shadow at the edge of the wood.
I had pricked my finger on a rose stem that morning. Back then, my blood didn’t bloom flowers. It didn’t raise forests. It was just a small cut that Mama kissed before she sat me on the counter and braided daisies into my hair. She hummed along as Papa sang in the garden out back. It was a song about a man urging the woman he loved to leave the comfort of her life and sail away with him, and the woman asked the man to stay and put down roots with her instead. My mother had always loved the song.
I missed the way she hummed softly as Papa howled the words. He was a terrible singer, but she loved it when he sang anyway. It was a soft, warm day at the end of the summer, and the shop had been slow.
My mother kissed me on the back of the head and said, “All done, my sweet sprout. I think your friends are waiting.”
She motioned to the front of the window, where two children smashed their faces against the glass—siblings with golden hair, barely a year apart. Anwen and her brother. Behind them, a blur through the window, was the shadow of the captain of the guard’s squire, tasked with looking after them. I excitedly hopped down off the counter. “Bye, Mom! Be back in a bloom!”
“In a bloom!” she called back as I tugged open the door and sunlight spilled into our quaint shop.
“Papa’s got a new gelding in the stables,” Prince Lorne said excitedly.
Anwen nodded. “It’s black!”
The squire gave a tired sigh. “We’re not going back up there.”
“We are!” the siblings proclaimed. Anwen grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the road that led away from the edge of the village, where my family’s shop was. Golden wheat fields surrounded the valley that fall. It was the beginning of autumn; still warm enough to not need a jacket, but the evenings brought a crisp chill. The Wildwood trees had already begun to turn orange and red, and it was between those trees, at that moment dashing toward the center of the village, that I saw it.
The shadow. It lurked at the edge of the Wildwood, and then it seemed to turn and stalked back into its depths.
“It’s nothing,” the squire had said, squinting where I’d pointed. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Just your imagination, Cerys. The crown protects us from the wood, you know.”
“But what if it’s not my imagination?” I asked.
Wen brandished a wooden sword that she pulled from her belt. “Then we’ll fight it!”
We were nine, and therefore invincible. The squire turned his gray eyes toward the sky and gave a long sigh. He was tall and fit, with tanned skin and calluses across his hands from years of sword fighting. His name was Seren—seventeen, the age I am now—and while he was tasked with the daily watch of the young prince and princess, he often seemed more like our peer than a caretaker. He certainly was a terrible babysitter, now that I think back on it. He liked to think he was tougher than everyone else, and smarter, even though I once saw him cry over a raven that had collided with the castle wall and broken its neck.
Anwen’s brother, who had just turned ten, was different, though. He was anxious and quiet. “I think we should tell Father.”
Seren grinned at him. “You scared or something, princeling?”
“No, I just think—”
“That there’s something scary in the wood?”
“I’m not afraid!” Lorne snapped, and as if to prove it, he puffed out his chest and reached out his hand. He brushed his thumb against his forefinger, and a small flame burst to life. It let off a soft orange glow that made the trees tremble at the sight. He steeled himself and marched toward the wood. “I’ll show you. Come on.”
Wen prickled. “Wait! But what if there really is something in the wood? What if there’s . . . an ancient?”
Her brother replied, “I’ll burn it.”
“Right, like you could kill anything—you can’t even beat me in a duel,” replied Seren, following him up the King’s Road toward the beginning of an old trade road. “You wouldn’t last a minute against an ancient.”
“How do you know?” Lorne shot back, the flame in his hand flickering brightly. “When was the last time anyone even saw one?”
Someone should have stopped them—I should have, but I simply followed behind them, bound toward the edge of the Wilds.
The leaves on the trees we approached were a molten gold, like an artist had taken a sunset and poured it over the forest, and the crisp smell of the coming winter floated on the autumn breeze. It was early afternoon, and the birds sang bright and loud in the treetops.
Of course, the wood itself was prohibited, and the single trade road that cut through the dark forest was now barely a sliver of white rock in the wood—overgrown over centuries of disuse. Some said that the road led to the magical city of Voryn, deep in the heart of the forest, but that was just a story. I didn’t know if Voryn still existed, indeed if it had ever existed. The Wildwood met Nor, a neighboring kingdom, on the other side, and beyond that a vast desert. The few people over the years who had defied the royal decree and ventured even a quarter mile into the wood and come out alive told of bone-eaters with razor teeth, and trees that screamed, and shadows that shifted on their own.
My mother was one of those people.
Papa met her on the road outside of the Village-in-the-Valley, having emerged from the Wildwood, badly bleeding but alive. He nursed her to health, and they fell in love, and I was born. My mother’s memories of the time before she came out of the wood were few, but Papa didn’t need to know anything more about her than that he loved her, and that she loved him. While they lived in this small cottage at the edge of the Village-in-the-Valley, she would sing enchanted songs about the Lady of the Wilds—one of the old gods from before trains and carriages and muskets, the one who, legend said, had gifted the first king of Aloriya with his crown—and the flowers in our small shop would listen.