“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.
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.”