Agate and I stand beside the Black Stream, staring into the rushing water. The water’s not actually black—it’s known for being crystal clear and sweet to drink—but the riverbed is covered in obsidian, making it appear as deep and dark as a slab of jet.

It still runs swift, but now it’s brackish and foul-smelling. I can’t see any reason for moving water to smell so foul. It makes no sense, just like everything else in this place.

We’ve been on the trail for five days. My feet ache, my stomach is empty, and my tongue is dry. I might not have known hunger and thirst before I entered Thornewood, but I know them now. I keep having nightmares, too. Always the same ones: first the headless thing with disjointed limbs dragging itself after me through the underbrush, its feet rustling through fallen leaves. Then the one about my mother taking her owl form and crunching my skull like a roasted chestnut.

Lovely.

“Are you even listening, Thedra?” asks Agate.

I blink at him. “Sorry. What did you say?”

“I said we’ll have to drink the water from the stream sometime. How long before we reach King Cygnus?”

“Neev says it’s several more days. Which makes it over a week before we reach Lebed. We should ration what’s in our skins.”

My breath puffs in little white clouds as I speak. The deeper we go into the forest, the more the unnatural cold increases. Ten times I’ve crossed Thornewood Forest on the way to and from Lebed. I’ve seen it tranquil in the green of summer or glowing with the vivid golden embers of autumn. But I’ve never seen it like this—the gnarled trees slick and black with rot, the plants encrusted in white frost that leaves them dead.

We’ve passed clearings of crystalline flowers frozen in ice, and dead, decaying trees. Once, the trail led us through an apple orchard and the smell of rot became so strong it made us retch and vomit. As we drew closer, I saw thousands of windfall apples, putrefied and crawling with worms. This time of year, they should be rosy pink or ocher gold, but they were swollen and black. The smell of ferment and decay was so strong it clung to our clothes for hours after we passed.

We have glimpsed several more animals changed or mutated into unnatural forms. Some are half-plant, half-animal, or a combination of two animals. Some defy explanation.

No wonder Neev says the villagers call it Poison Forest. There’s a spell on this place, there must be. An ugly spell.

I’m afraid the river is enchanted like the rest of the forest, but I don’t want to say it out loud. My water supply is also much lower than I want to admit, and I keep questioning myself. I’ve tried so hard not to drink from it recklessly, and yet it’s nearly gone. 

Normally, I’d think resting near water would be a good idea, but not this water. It smells as evil as it looks. We walk along the river until we reach the path again and stop at nightfall in a clearing.

I make a small fire, but as usual, the wood we gathered refuses to stay lit. Agate paces from one edge of the clearing to the other. Back and forth, back and forth, like a nervous cat. His blue and gold uniform looks out of place in the drab surroundings.

“Gate, stop. You’re making me anxious.”

“Can’t stop moving. I’ll freeze if I do.”

I kneel beside Neev, forming an idea. I hate to keep thinking of her in terms of how she can keep me warm, but I’m desperate for a diversion. “I said I’d show you how to control your power.”

She gives me an uncertain look. “Here? In the forest?”

I look at the gray, ice-encrusted branches around us. “I don’t think any of this wood will burn. It’s all wet, frozen, or rotted. Besides, we need something to do.”

I take a few dried leaves and place them on a stone. “See if you can burn these like you did the rope when Agate tied you up the other night.”

She reaches for the leaves, and I say, “Gloves off.”

Neev pauses, her hand in midair. She shakes her head. “No.”

“I’ve seen unregistered elementals before. They showed them to us in training, to make us agree to having our power harnessed. Nothing about your hands could be worse than that.”

She bites her lip and gives a small nod. “How does that work?”

“They use something called a siphon to drain your power and contain it within an impenetrable vessel. Like this one.” I point to my diamond vial.

“But doesn’t it lessen your power?”

“Considerably at first, but it also makes it easier to control and less likely to kill you.”

Neev studies my face with wide gray eyes. “Does it hurt?”

I look at the vial in my hand, remembering even though I don’t like to. “Yes. But I don’t have a siphon and I wouldn’t want to try it on you without help if I did. They think that’s how my mother died. She was a shapeshifter. You can’t draw out their power or bottle it like an elemental’s power. It doesn’t work. It’s too much a part of them. And an adult elemental is similar. Your power is all grown into you now, difficult to remove.”

Neev still hasn’t removed her gloves, and she smooths her fingers over the back of her hand. “If we can’t drain or harness my power, then what’s the point?”

“If you can at least learn to control it anytime you want, not just when you’re angry or afraid, you’re safer. Aren’t you?”

She pauses, considering. Finally, she tugs at the fingertips of her right glove until it comes free and slips off. The skin on her hand is bubbled and scored with the glossy white scars of a thousand healed burns. A few of the nails on her dominant hand are blackened, and two are gone, replaced by scar tissue.

“Oh, Neev. You said it didn’t hurt.”

She cradles her hand to her chest, hiding it. “They used to go away when I was a little girl. But the more it happened, the less they healed. And the older I get, the worse it is if I lose control. Dette used to bathe them for me in a tincture she made. It helped.”

This conjures images of Dette stuffing herbs and fragrant blossoms into jars of oil, with sunlight glinting off her sable ringlets. Neev’s gaze is on the remnant of rope I placed on the stone for her to ignite, but now that I’ve seen her scars, I have misgivings about making her use her power, even if it means she’ll be safer in the end. Agate has stopped his pacing and is watching us, but he says nothing.

“Maybe try lighting it with your mind, rather than channeling it through your hands?”

She nods, focused on the rope. I remember what it was like to be an untrained elemental. The way my power intertwined with my emotions—fear and anger and joy and sadness. Before I harnessed it and made it obey me, jumping like a trick pony at the snap of my fingers or a twist of my wrist, it was me, as much a part of me as my hair or lungs, or the rivers of blood in my veins.

Sometimes I dream of wielding my power as I could have if they had not drawn it out of me and condensed it into a diamond cage. I could cast branches from my fingertips, energy streaming from my every pore, my eyes, the ends of my hair. A lightning elemental in a storm is an instrument of incredible power. And of death and destruction. This is why our mages created the siphon, a contraption of glass tubes attached to the fingers that drains an elemental’s raging power until they learn to control it.

The pile of leaves still hasn’t ignited, and a crease forms between Neev’s eyebrows as she refocuses on it.

Nothing happens. She sighs. “It’s no use.”

“Use some emotion to start. Annoyance, for example.”

“It won’t work if I’m not touching it. The only time that works is by accident.”

“Neev, this journey will be dangerous. Try again.”

“No!” Neev’s eyes flash at me, and a wave of heat rolls off her body like the air wafting from an open oven door, infinitely comforting in this frigid death-hole of a forest.

“That’s more like it,” I urge. “It’s there, beneath the surface. But don’t use the emotion to control it or you’ll lose hold. Keep it in your mind. Make it obey you.”

Her lips tremble with repressed emotion and she turns to and looks at the pile of leaves as if she hates it. She holds her hands out, perhaps instinctively, and claps them together before I can stop her. Brilliant white light flashes through the clearing, burning my retinas and knocking me onto my back like the shock wave of an explosion.

When I can see again, Agate is bending over me and Neev is standing at my feet.

“Are you alright?”

I nod feebly. My head aches, and there are spots behind my eyelids when I blink, but at least I’m not blinded. Agate helps me sit up. When I look at Neev, her face is frozen with anger and fear. She crumbles the ashes of the burned leaves into black dust.

“There,” she says, as if the matter is settled. “Now leave me alone.”

She turns and leaves the clearing and I put my head in my hands. Agate looks amused.

“I see nothing funny.”

“No?” He snorts.

“Stop chortling at your future queen. She could have killed us. She still could.”

“Exactly. Why didn’t you drag her back to the palace the minute you learned she was an untrained elemental? You’re more like your father than you know, Thedra.”

My spine stiffens. “What do you mean?”

“Stubborn as a mule until it comes to a pretty face.”

I press my lips together. Neev and I have shared my bedroll for the past five nights, and I haven’t touched her. Gate’s not wrong about my attraction to her, but he’s wrong if he thinks I’m abusing my power.

“That’s bullshit. I brought her because she threatened to rat me out if I didn’t. And how dare you speak to me that way? You think because you’ve been sent to fetch me a thousand times it makes you someone important? An undercaptain, with your sleepy spells. Licking boots and oiling hinges and sucking—”

“Ha! You think I’m ashamed of what I’ve done to get ahead?”

I roll my eyes. Most people with power glory in it to some degree, but men fortunate enough to be born with it are often particularly self-aggrandizing. Agate is no different. But despite how irritating I find him, I’ve never been able to summon hatred for him since he’s not malicious.

Neev doesn’t return, and I fall asleep waiting for her beneath our brush shelter. Being hit by the wave of her raw magic exhausted me, and the cold doesn’t help. I’m tired and sore when I wake up in the morning. Neev’s cloak is draped over me and she and Agate are preparing a breakfast of hard biscuit, jerky, and a pile of ramps and wild onion. I wander over to them, rubbing sleep from my eyes, and we greet one another with murmurs and nods.

We eat the plants raw since we have no fire. All I can think about is finding something to drink. I keep recalling the dream I had from Gate’s spell the other night, the one with all the delicious food, and my mouth waters. We still have four days of walking left. 

As we pack up our supplies, I say, “Neev, I’m sorry for yesterday. I shouldn’t have pushed you.” I resist the urge to point out that technically, my instruction worked. She did incinerate the rope. She just nearly blinded me in the process.

Her gaze slides to mine, her pale gray eyes no longer hard with anger. “It’s all right. Keep my cloak. I mean...it’s yours anyway.” She shrugs. “And I don’t need it.”

For the hundredth time, I envy the power that makes her hands like living coals and gives her the ability to withstand the forest’s bone-deep cold. A girl of fire and light. But I suspect the poison of Thornewood goes beyond the cold, frost, and blight. I fear it’s more insidious, and I don’t know how much longer we can stand it before something else goes wrong.