Cordelia had worried that people might not recognize the silver shards.
She’d been wrong.
As she pulled out the three heavy silver pieces, engraved with delicate starflowers, light pierced the heavy clouds overhead. It wasn’t the bright white lens of sunlight; it was a pale, shimmering green spear that made breaths catch all over the tumultuous battlefield as it shot down to illuminate the three shards in her hand.
“The Raven Crown.” Giles’s voice bounced across every edge of the field, powered once again by his own sorcery, as he scooped up one of the pieces. It shimmered with mystical green light as he held it high, turning it back and forth for all to see. “Gifted to my sister on Mount Corve by the spirits of the land, who had held it for her, waiting, all these years.”
There was a moment of awestruck silence … except in Cordelia’s head, where Connall’s voice shouted frantically, Cordelia, what have you done?
Shh, she thought back at him. Find some faith!
“Look! It’s still broken!” The duchess of Solenne strode forward across the field, her helmet bristling with angry iron spikes. “So what if these ragtag children have stolen its pieces for their own ends?” she roared. “Soldiers, attack these pretenders to the throne!”
A cloud of arrows shot across the field, aimed at the three children on the hill.
It was an impossible array for anyone to defeat. They didn’t even have a shield to hide behind. Connall’s shout of despair rang out across the battlefield and inside Cordelia’s head, endless and echoing—
But Rosalind had come to grips with her own sorcery, too, when she had claimed her sword at the gates of Mount Corve, and she had been practicing ever since. Now she flung out her free hand, and half of those attacking arrows whirled around immediately in midflight, flying back over the heads of the soldiers who had shot them. Her long sword cut through the air with incredible speed, slashing all the remaining arrows into splintering pieces that rained harmlessly across the grass.
“Halt. Halt! Halt!” The four dukes and the duchess were all bellowing the same word now through the chaos—but as the cloud of arrows finally trickled to a stop, leaving the field in even more disarray than before, their own argument only grew louder and fiercer.
“How dare—!”
“Be silent—!”
“The outrage—!”
“Just sorcery—!”
They all gathered together in the center of the field, screaming and waving their heavily armored arms in one another’s faces, but Cordelia ignored them all to shake her head at Giles. He had made one mistake in his earlier announcement. “They weren’t just holding this crown for me,” she said quietly. “We have to do this together to make it work. Remember?”
In her hands, the three pieces had lain perfectly quiet and still.
Now, she passed the final piece to Rosalind, who lowered her sword … and a low, vibrating hum shivered through each of the broken pieces.
Giles gulped visibly as he turned away from the battlefield, his gaze fixed on the vibrating silver in his palm. “This … is new. Why didn’t it do this any of the other times we tried to mend it?”
“Because I didn’t understand then what I had to do to seal our part of the bargain,” said Cordelia.
Rosalind squared her shoulders and met Cordelia’s gaze, her face still red and glowing from her victory in battle. “What do you need from the two of us?”
“Heart and fierce protection.” Cordelia took a breath. “We have to all agree to the contract. Together.”
And I’ll make the sacrifice to seal it.
She stepped, willingly, toward the triplets she had squabbled with and jostled against all her life.
Her free hand landed on Rosalind’s strong shoulder. Giles’s long, musician’s fingers gripped Cordelia’s shoulder as Rosalind’s free hand landed on his.
“We swear,” Cordelia said, and the others repeated her words as the adult dukes and duchesses squabbled obliviously on the field beneath them, “to love this land and to listen to its needs and to protect it with all of our skills. We three seal ourselves to the land of Corvenne … forever.”
Together, they set the three pieces of the broken crown in place … and inside her head, Cordelia added one more promise that only the land could hear:
It’s all yours now. I’m giving it up for you.
Will you make your own sacrifice for me in return?
A thunderous boom erupted beneath them in deafening answer.
Bright green filled Cordelia’s vision.
Pressure filled her ears until they popped.
Everything was noise. Everything was confusion.
Blinded, deafened, Cordelia gripped Rosalind’s shoulder for dear life. Giles’s grip held her in place.
Behind and around them, a thousand voices sang in chorus:
You are ours.
We are yours.
Forever and ever in endless harmony.
Together.
Unified.
Three in one.
Home!
“Cordy. Cordy! Cordy!” Giles and Rosalind were both shouting at once, their words breaking through the triumphant song of the land.
She blinked hard, swallowing again and again as she tried to break through to reach them—so close but so entirely untouchable. Green stems filled her veins, bursting into joyful blossom. The mountains around her were her steady guardians, anchoring her in place. The—
“Cordy!”
Giles’s face swam into focus before her, and she came back into herself with a jolt.
Tears streamed down his grimy cheeks, but his smile was full of joy. “We did it! Look!”
It seemed to take an eon to relocate herself in her too-small, limited body and to take control of all its different pieces. But once she finally managed to move her chin down …
The Raven Crown glowed in the triplets’ three hands, heavy, silver … and without a single mark along its shining curves to show where it had ever been broken.
Green light surrounded all three of them in a beaming circle underneath a beautifully sunny, cloudless sky.
Leafy birch, ash, and oak trees—vast and whispering—had erupted to march behind them, turning the path down the hillside into a thick, vibrant woodland.
Before them, joyful starflowers covered the grass of what had once been a battlefield. Weapons lay scattered, abandoned, among the bright white blossoms.
All across the starflower field, figures kneeled now in their hundreds …
Every one of them kneeling to her.
The dukes of Arden and Lune were among them. The other dukes were kneeling, too, and so was the duchess of Solenne, her spiked helmet discarded on the grass nearby and her rebellion at an end.
Only Connall still stood at the far end of the field, staring at all of those prone bodies with a lost, stunned look … but as his gaze finally rose to meet hers, he sank down to his knees beside the two sorcerers who had guarded him.
I’ve found that faith, he whispered in her head, voice full of wonder. I should have known that you’d dare anything, my wildest little sister. But oh, Cordelia, what have you sacrificed for our sakes?
“There’s no denying it now!” Rosalind raised the Raven Crown and set it firmly on Cordelia’s head. It fit there with supernatural precision. “You are the true Raven Queen for good, whether anyone else likes it or not.”
Giles nodded enthusiastically, leaning in to adjust the crown’s angle. “No one can pretend they have a better claim to the throne—so no one can change what you are from now on!”
“No,” Cordelia echoed, her voice eerily distant in her own ears. “No one ever can.” Not even me.
The crown bore down on her head with far more weight than those three sealed shards could account for on their own. The rustle of surrendered, falling wings inside her body was too faint for anyone else to hear.
Would it fade away completely, in time? Or would she hear its echo haunting her forever?
Her human feet were heavy and solid on the land, anchored by the crown she wore. Invisible green roots held her down almost as tightly as the trees of the brand-new forest in her wake. She had sealed her spirit to the land, it had grounded her and swallowed her into lifelong service as the true queen of Corvenne …
And she had promised away her own magic to seal the crown. She would never be able to change her shape again.
Far too soon, every duke and duchess on the field was striding toward the triplets ahead of a jostling crowd of followers.
“Your Majesty.” The duke of Lune swept a low bow to Cordelia as the duchess of Solenne hurried to catch up with him, the three other dukes wrestling for position behind them. “I am delighted to reunite you with your brother at last! As your loyal regents, Arden and I will of course be—”
“No.”
The land and its spirits had made their own sacrifice to mend the Raven Crown, giving up to Cordelia as much as she had given up to them. Now all of their vast green power lay in Cordelia’s control, just as it had for the Raven Kings and Queens of old … and she would never be anyone’s helpless pawn again.
“I’m not having any regents, and you’re not taking control of this kingdom.” Spiky bushes of thorns erupted from the grass around her as Cordelia stalked forward in her bloodstained old green linen gown, the earth rumbling underneath the dukes’ and duchesses’ feet. “You will release Connall from those cuffs right now,” she snarled, “free Alys from wherever you’ve put her, and take off that horrible collar from my mother, or I’ll pull down that castle to do it myself!”
“She can,” Rosalind told them, “and she will. But even if she didn’t …” She lifted her square chin proudly. “I’d get Mother free with my sword, no matter how many soldiers stood against me!” The memory of victory rang in her voice, until Cordelia could almost see the remnants of those shattered arrows before them.
“Actually,” said Giles firmly, “we would do it together. Our family will never be separated again. Not by anybody. We will all be safe and respected in my sister’s court.”
Every duke and duchess opened their mouth at once to argue … but the ground leaped up beneath them before they could utter a word and tipped them all into obedient bows.
As they reluctantly lowered their heads in acceptance, Giles’s best performing smile broke across his face. “Excellent,” he said. “Now you may all lead us to our mother.”