“But—”
“The prince is my responsibility. I have to find him,” he replied, and then he ran back into the fog, toward the shriek and the growls and my mother and Lorne. And Wen and I stood there for a moment longer as he fled into the mists—there one moment, and then gone.
“W-We have to keep going,” Anwen hiccupped, sobbing, tearing me out of my thoughts.
But Mom was still in the wood.
I turned to Wen and told her, “Stay here—okay? I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed me by the arm, her nails digging into my flesh to root me there. “You’re not going back in there! You’ll never come back.”
“I can’t leave my mom.”
She hiccupped a sob and held on tighter. “But—but what about me?”
“The wood won’t come for you if you make it out,” I replied, because of the pact the ancient king made with the cursewood. Anwen would be safe, but I couldn’t just sit here while my mother—while she . . .
My best friend’s fingers slowly released me. She slumped against a tree, defeated. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’ll come back,” I promised, and went into the wood again, deeper than I ever had before. The thorns and briars that curled up from the underbrush picked at the edges of my dress, grabbing at them, as if pleading me to stop. But I couldn’t. Around me, the bone-eaters swarmed like bees, but I couldn’t see them in the thick fog. When I was sure I was back to where I had last left my mother, all I found were trees. They had just disappeared. When I looked back, I couldn’t see Wen anymore, either.
“Seren!” I cried, stumbling deeper into the wood. “Where . . .” I heard something crunch under my feet. I shifted my foot away, and there was a pair of broken glasses. Seren’s. I quickly grabbed them up. “Seren! Where are—”
Through the trees, I saw two figures in front of a hollowed-out log. One was Seren—and the other was impossibly tall, powerful, and skeletal. The ancient held Seren off the ground by his throat. Seren kicked and struggled, blood darkening the front of his jerkin from the ancient’s claws.
The monster was killing him.
I grabbed a stick from the ground and threw it at the beast. It hit the creature’s bone-white skull. The ancient dropped Seren and turned toward me.
Seren slumped onto the ground and didn’t move. Why wasn’t he moving?
The ancient studied me with gleaming yellow eyes. In the mist, black motes floated in the air like snow. But I’d never seen black snow before. It looked like . . . seeds. Black dandelion seeds.
Something stung the side of my neck, and I quickly brought my hand up to swipe away whatever it was—and I felt what could only be the woodcurse. Something like roots began to burrow into my skin, and I gave a cry, pulling at them, but they were already so deep.
The next thing I knew, the creature was towering over me, flashing its sharp white teeth. I stumbled back, over a root, and fell onto my back. The pain in my neck blossomed into agony, and I could barely move.
The ancient lunged for me. I screamed and flung my arms up over my face—
Then there was silence.
I felt a wetness drip onto my arm. It was bright red like a paint splotch. I turned my eyes upward.
In front of me was my mother. She knelt over me, her back toward the ancient, shielding me from harm. The ancient had its claws in her, so deep they came through the other side. In her honey hair, there were the daisies she had twined into them this morning. I remembered them so vividly. Not her face. Not her voice. The daisies. And I remembered that when she smiled at me that final time, her mouth was filled with blood. She pressed a red kiss on my forehead.
A shiver ran through me. The pain in my neck dulled.
But that was no longer my concern. The creature pulled its claws out of my mother’s side. It snarled, and she stood with great difficulty, turning to face the creature.
“Run, my darling,” she said over her shoulder to me. “I’m sorry.”
“But—no—”
That was when a loud, commanding voice boomed through the trees—the king’s voice. Roots swirled around me; they wrapped around my middle and pulled me away from the danger, through the wood faster than I could stop them. I clawed at the dirt because I couldn’t leave my mother. I couldn’t leave Seren. Not to face the creature alone—
My mother faded into the fog, facing that monster, and the roots pulled me out of the dark wood, finally letting go. I clawed at the ground to stand, and in front of me was King Merrick on his white horse, his crown glowing, its leaves twining and swaying. Wen was by his side. I would find out later that my mother had sent word to him before she entered the wood. He looked down at me with eyes still alight with the magic of the crown.
“Where’s my son?” he asked, his voice detached and cold.
“I—I don’t—I didn’t—”
“Where’s my son?” he said louder, more forceful.
I didn’t know how to answer him. He was in the wood—they were all still there, I knew it. They had to be. We had to go in and save my mother. I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t leave the prince. I couldn’t leave Seren.
I couldn’t—
But then the magic in his eyes faded, and he pressed his hands against his face, and he cried.
And none of them—neither the king nor his guard, soon there by his side—went in to save Lorne, or Seren, or my mother, because they already knew what I was too stubborn to believe. That it was too late. That they were dead. They were all dead the moment they met the ancient, the moment the seeds of the woodcurse had descended on us.
And yet, somehow, I had survived.
3
The Castle of Aloriya
Cerys
ANWEN SAID SHE would help me close down the shop before returning to the castle. I told her that she didn’t have to, but she pointed out that the sooner I got done, the sooner I could help Papa at the castle. It wasn’t a lie, but in truth I knew she didn’t want to return to being the heir to the throne quite yet. Or that was her intention. She came into town, in disguise, to get away from her name and her duties, but even while she helped me set the rest of the roses in their vases, I could tell that she hadn’t really escaped today. Her mind was lost somewhere else—maybe in her own doubts at being a good ruler, maybe in the crown’s ineffable power, or maybe in the wood itself—at least until we noticed that the fox had gotten into the spool of red yarn I had in a basket at the bottom of the stairs.
He rolled it around the shop, and when he realized that it was unspooling, well, you could just imagine his excitement. I didn’t have the heart to take it away from him, even though I’d bought the yarn fresh from our neighbor, intending to make a winter scarf for Papa, and Wen couldn’t stop laughing. After the fox unspooled the entire thing, he lay in a corner, kicking and nibbling at the thread.
“You’re so much trouble,” I mumbled, finding the end of the yarn, and began to reroll it.
The fox turned over and watched, flattening his ears to his head. He stuck up his rump, tail swishing, and pounced at the other end of the yarn, but I jerked it out of his claws. Wen watched with a secret sort of smile.
“I think I know why you keep him around,” she said as I rerolled the yarn.