EMELINE GULPED, RAISED BOTH hands, and stepped back. Wondering if the curse had somehow poisoned Grace too.
“Hasn’t she learned by now?” Grace’s voice was rough with fury. “I keep killing you, and you keep coming back, pretending to be people I love.”
She thinks I’m a shadow skin.
“You can’t trick me,” Grace said bitterly. “Everyone I love is gone.”
“Grace…”
“Don’t speak!” Grace hissed, coming forward, onto the step. The steel of her blade pressed harder into Emeline’s skin.
How do I prove I’m me?
She contemplated the glimmering steel, remembering the times she’d watched a shadow skin die, the way they dissolved like smoke. If Grace killed her, Emeline wouldn’t dissolve. She would fall dead to the ground, her blood seeping into the dust-covered earth.
With that image in her mind, Emeline reached for the cold shaft of the blade, gripping it hard, as if she planned to take it. Grace’s eyes widened. She yanked the sword back, slicing Emeline’s palm.
Emeline winced at the sharp pain, then fisted her hand and held it out between them, letting her fingers slowly uncurl. Blood seeped up from the cut, illuminated by the starlight.
“Shadow skins don’t bleed,” she said softly.
Blood dripped onto the step between them. Grace sucked in a sharp breath, staring at the drops of red splattering the pale gray dust, then lowered the blade to her side. “Emeline … I’m so sorry.”
Emeline glanced behind her, checking to see if their voices had drawn trouble, before nudging Grace into the house. “It’s fine. Let’s get inside.”
Emeline bolted the door behind them as Grace sheathed the sword, propping it next to the window, then lifted a candelabra whose flames lit the way.
“Are you alone?”
Grace nodded, silent, moving through the darkened house to peer out the kitchen windows, which overlooked the garden and stables in the back. Checking for threats.
“There’s no one left. Sable, Rooke, Hawthorne … they’re gone. Even the king is gone.”
At these words, Emeline’s anger at Hawthorne paled in comparison to the wave of grief that crashed over her. The thought of never seeing him again, of never seeing any of them again, felt like gasping for air and finding none.
She was too late; she’d lost them.
Her fingers curled and uncurled. “Is there a way to, I don’t know, undo it?”
Grace stared blankly. Her normally bright eyes were leaden, and her mouth was pressed into a grim line.
“Well, you can’t stay here,” said Emeline, burying the horrible weight of it. “You might be able to manage one or two shadow skins, but what happens when groups of them come? When they realize you’re the last living thing in this city and they decide to swarm the house?”
Sable might have trained Grace to wield a sword, but one girl was no match for a horde of shadow skins. And this house couldn’t stand against the Vile and her curse forever.
“I’m taking you back to Edgewood with me.”
Grace’s brow furrowed. “And if Sable returns?” She shook her head. “I tithed that life. I’m not going back to it. This is my home.”
“But there’s nothing for you here.”
The silence following those words hung heavy as a stone between them. It was the same thing Hawthorne said two years ago. It was the reason he took her memories—thinking he knew better than she did.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said immediately. “But we can’t sit here and wait to be devoured.”
Grace jutted out her chin. “I wasn’t planning on it.” Spinning on her heel, she lifted the candelabra in her hand and walked into what looked like a dining room. Emeline followed behind.
Grace veered around a long dinner table circled by upholstered chairs, then stopped abruptly. Emeline came to stand on the opposite side. Between them, across the table’s oaken surface, lay the map they’d used to find the Song Mage’s house. Emeline, who hadn’t gotten a good look at it before, paused as a symbol caught the light of the candle flames. She bent over the map, her gaze trailing past Edgewood on the northern border, past the King’s City, to the symbol of a door nestled into the trunk of a giant tree.
Beneath it were the words: The Heartwood.
Her brow furrowed. “The Heartwood?”
“It’s where the king brings tithes from the borderlands,” Grace explained. “To strengthen the woods against the curse.” She reached for the map and started rolling it. “It’s where I tithed everything dear to me beyond the forest.”
“Okay,” said Emeline, not understanding.
“I have one thing left to tithe,” Grace explained.
“And what’s that?”
“My life,” she whispered, still rolling. “The breath in my lungs.”
A chill went through Emeline. “What?”
Grace gripped the rolled map hard in both hands, staring down at it. “You didn’t see how terrified Sable was. She felt herself disappearing. She knew she’d never be human again.” When Grace looked up, tears shone in her eyes. “If I can give that back to her…”
Her shoulders started to shake. Dropping the map, she lifted her hands to her face, trying to stifle her sobs.
Emeline’s heart cracked open. Moving quickly to Grace’s side, she pulled her into a hug. She seemed so soft and small and lost.
“Grace,” Emeline whispered, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Do you really think Sable will want to return if you aren’t waiting for her when she does?”
Grace stiffened, then pulled away. “I’ve already decided.” From the fierce set of her jaw, Emeline knew she would hear no more protests. “I’m going.”
Snatching up the map, Grace left the room, leaving the candle burning on the table.
Emeline couldn’t let her go out there alone. Not with every horrible thing in the woods on the prowl. So she went after her, certain Grace would realize the folly of this decision. And when she did, Emeline would be there to bring her home to Edgewood.
She may have lost the others, but she could still save Grace.
THEY RODE DEEP INTO the woods. The farther they went, the colder it grew, reminding Emeline of the Song Mage’s house. Of that eerie, bone-chilling cold. It stung her skin and made her breath fog the air. Only Lament was warm beneath her.
Beside Emeline, Grace sat astride her own horse, with one of Sable’s swords sheathed at her back, scanning the night-dark woods. Around them, pallid trees breathed their rattled, rasping breaths. Beneath the moon, the forest was frost white—the color of corruption.
Sometimes Emeline thought she saw a shadow keeping pace with them, darting in and out of the white trees. But when she looked closer, there was nothing there.
Gripping the reins tighter, Emeline nudged Lament onwards.
Too soon, they found it: a wooden door set into the trunk of a massive oak. Its roots plunged into the earth, thick and thirsty. Its pale bark curled like ropes, reaching upwards to where leafless branches clawed at the cobalt sky.
Emeline dismounted.
“I’ll see if it’s locked,” she said, hoping it was, wondering if she could jam the door if it wasn’t. She’d expected Grace to have come to her senses by now. Now she was scrambling to think of another plan.
Grace kept watch as Emeline approached the door. Its copper hinges were rusted blue, and burned into the door’s wooden surface was the symbol of a seed.
Before Emeline could reach for the copper doorknob, Grace drew Sable’s sword.
At the sound, Emeline turned to find dozens of shadow skins stepping out of the trees, their black shapes stark against the silvery woods. As Grace backed towards Emeline, gripping her blade, Emeline felt the monsters prod at her mind, like dozens of fingers dipping into a still pool, about to plunge into its depths.
Lament reared up, screaming. The unnatural sound pierced Emeline’s ears like knives, making her flinch. The ember mare smashed her hooves against the earth, setting it ablaze with red fire.
The shadow skins crept closer.
When Lament reared again, Emeline moved to calm her, but an echoing scream in the distance made her pause. The sound was much louder. Like a roaring sea.
The earth began to tremble beneath their feet.
Emeline turned. In the distance, the orange glow of wildfire swept through the pale trees. Coming straight for them.
No. Not fire.
Horses.
The ember mares were running. Lament had called them.
Emeline grabbed Grace’s hand, pulling her towards the oak, hoping to use it as a shield against the flaming bodies barreling down on them from behind. They pressed their backs against the door until their shoulder blades hurt from the pressure.
The earth shuddered and quaked. Their bones shook and their teeth clattered.
Soon, the fire was upon them, hot and roaring.
The ember mares blasted past, parting around the giant oak that sheltered Emeline and Grace. Snorting fire and screaming fury, they formed a wall of flame around both girls as they surged over the shadow skins, pummeling them with their thunderous hooves, drowning them in wildfire, forcing them to retreat.
Emeline pushed away from the door, watching the sea of red-gold wash through the white trees, awestruck as the horses swept into the distance, leaving no trace of the shadow skins behind.
When the woods fell silent, only Lament remained, trotting back to them.
“Come on,” said Grace, gripping her shimmering sword and stepping up to the door. It creaked as she swung it open, revealing brown earthen steps woven with thin white roots that disappeared down into the cavernous dark.
“Grace, wait—”
When Emeline stepped inside to stop her, the door swung shut, swallowing them like a hungry mouth and plunging them into blackness. Emeline turned, heart hammering, and reached out her hands, sweeping them through the air until her fingers grazed the wood of the door. Grabbing hold of the copper handle, she tried to turn it.
It wouldn’t budge.
Locked.
“No.…”
“It won’t open until a tithe is given,” came Grace’s voice from much too far away.
Shit, thought Emeline, running shaky hands through her hair. What have I done?
Emeline couldn’t see her friend in the darkness, but she heard Grace’s footsteps moving ever downwards. Using the dirt walls to guide her, Emeline followed her down the steps.
How would she get Grace out of here now?
As she descended, the air began to glow. Something pulsed through the cool, soft dirt beneath her palms and a damp, earthy smell seeped up. At the bottom of the steps, the glow brightened and Emeline saw the root-infested walls around her.
Grace’s silhouette shrank into the distance.
Emeline hurried forward, following her through the glow until the strange pulsing swelled, filling up her chest, and the earthen corridor opened into an orb-shaped chamber, with pale roots trailing like ivy down to the floor.
In the center of the chamber was the source of the glow and the pulse: huge and white and shaped like a teardrop, a seed thumped like a human heart, suspended in a tangled web of roots instead of arteries.
Beneath it lay a black pool, rippling gently as drops of water fell into it.
The Heartwood.
Emeline imagined the king standing here, offering up the power in Edgewood’s tithes, helping the forest fight back the curse. She thought of her father, the Song Mage, making his own sacrifice. Had he stood in this exact spot? Was this where he was transformed from a talented musician into a monstrous mage?
Emeline shivered.
As Grace disappeared around the other side of that beating heart, Emeline felt her last chance slipping away. It was now or never. She would get them both out—by force, if necessary. She would break down that door if she had to. No way was she letting Grace do this.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Grace ignored her.
“Don’t you think Sable would want you to live your life?” Emeline pressed, a little desperately, coming around the other side of the suspended heart. “Don’t you think she’d want to know you’re alive in the world, sleeping beneath the same sky, thinking about her?”
“She won’t know,” came Grace’s answer. “Because she won’t—”
When Emeline came into view, Grace glanced up. Her dark gaze darted to something over Emeline’s shoulder and her eyes widened. “Emeline! Watch out!”
When Emeline turned to look, a loud thud! clanged in her ears. Pain sparked at the back of her head.
She didn’t even feel herself fall before the dark descended.