“Get Pa out of here.”
The shadow skin didn’t stop Maisie from escaping. Only fixed its attention on Emeline. It had no eyes, and yet it seemed to see her.Knowher. As if she and it had some score to settle.
As ifshewas the reason it was here.
Emeline Lark.The voice oozed like blood through the cracks in her mind. To her horror, Emeline felt her body stiffen like stone.
There was a sudden commotion in the living room. But Emeline couldn’t turn to see. Cold fingers were slithering throughher mind, and horror froze her in place. Like a fingertip running over the pages of a diary, it sifted through her secret thoughts and fears and desires.
The shadow skin grinned wider, until its mouth was a cracking line splitting its face in two.
The image of a young man flared in her mind. With mismatched gray eyes and maple-dark hair, he stood tall and strong as an oak.Hawthorne.They were in his kitchen, and she was sitting on his counter. He was so real, she could smell the woodsmoke on his clothes. Hawthorne leaned over her, his warm hands cupping the backs of her bare calves. His mouth crooked at the side, as if he had mischief in mind.
Suddenly, the scene changed. His kitchen disappeared, replaced by a moonlit grove. Hawthorne was taken from her by two armed hedgemen and forced to his knees. They pressed his cheek against the surface of a gray stone slab, holding him down.
The Wood King appeared over him. Gray lichen wrapped around the king’s woody body like rotting flesh, and in his gnarled hand was the cleaver.
Emeline tried to move, to come to Hawthorne’s aid, but her body refused to obey. Fear rippled through her as the blade lifted, catching the moonlight.
The weight of it—Hawthorne, dead—pushed all the air from her lungs.
You have two days, Emeline Lark. If you are not back through my gate by sunset on the second day, your sentence will be carried out with Hawthorne standing in for you.
Emeline shook off the vision and looked up to find a nightmare standing over her. Past its shoulder, through the windows, the setting sun painted the sky bloodred.
Sunset.
No…
The force of that one little word broke the shadow skin’s hold, giving Emeline a split second to remember Sable’s knife at her hip.Normal steel can’t cut through shadow skins, but this can.She drew the glimmering blade from its sheath.
You’re mine!the monster hissed, its clawed hands reaching to plunge into her chest and dig out her beating heart.
Emeline thrust the knife into the monster’s throat.
The cold voice in her mind went silent. The shadow skin staggered back, dazed, as darkness seeped out of the wound and it fell to its knees before crumbling completely. Within seconds, the dust of its body transformed into bright yellow buttercups, blooming in the middle of the kitchen floor.
The room solidified around her. Pa and Maisie and Joel were all there, staring at Emeline. Maisie had a shovel in one hand, poised as if ready to swing. Joel gripped a crowbar, ready to do the same.
In the sky out the windows, the sunset was bleeding away.
If you do not return,the king’s dusty voice thundered,your surety will pay the price for your defiance.
With the Song Mage’s music crumpled in her fist and Sable’s knife sheathed at her hip, Emeline moved barefoot through the kitchen, heading for the back door.
“Baby girl.” Maisie reached for her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, looking towards the woods, to that empty space in the trees. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Joel stared openmouthed at the buttercups.
Emeline hugged Pa tight before tracking blood from her sliced heel across the floor and into the woods—where she ran as hard and as fast as she could.
She didn’t feel the pain in her foot. Didn’t feel the burn in her lungs.
This way,said the trees.Follow us.
They led her to Bog. The nearest entry point into the city.
