What in the—
Everything went black.
“Now, that,” a croaking, feminine voice said, “was quite a sight.”
Kieran’s eyes flew open.He sat up with a gasp, expecting pain from the toad creature’s claws piercing his flesh.Instead, he justfelt…tired and heavy, as if his body were made of iron.Even opening his eyes and sitting up was a fight.
What he saw, though, immediately distracted him from his current physical state.
He was lying in a creaking wooden bed, the sheets well-worn and patched with random scraps of fabric.He found himself in a strange combination of a rabbit’s burrow and a studio apartment.Instead of standard walls, there was tightly packed dirt, and bright green moss acted as a carpet.Mushrooms and huge pinkish crystals clung to the earthen walls, all glowing with faint light.Dried herbs hung from the ceiling, and around the moss coating the ground bounced motes of bluish light, as weightless as balloons, occasionally ricocheting off each other and squeaking with dismay.Other pieces of furniture looked as if they had grown out of the ground itself, with roots connecting them to the floor.A fire in a stone woodstove at the other end of the room crackled, spitting smoke through a hollow stone pillar that went into the ceiling.
The most notable feature of this strange home, though, was the woman in front of him.
She looked to be in her late eighties, with a hunched back and deep wrinkles.Her skin was light brown, and her glossy black hair was tied back in a braid.She had huge milky-brown eyes and round glasses that sat on the edge of a stubby nose.She wore ragged patchwork clothes, along with a cape made of moss, and atop her head was a floppy pointed hat decorated with mushrooms.
She leaned over Kieran, examining him.Her eyes looked enormous behind her round spectacles.“Are you alive, little witch?”
“Gah!”Kieran gasped, lurching back.His head swung around.“What’s going on?Where am I?”
“That’s no way to greet the person who just saved your life,” the old woman said.She used a walking stick to gently poke Kieran’s side.“Have some respect for your elders.”
“What?You…saved my life?”
The old woman gestured to his side.“Sure did.Wasn’t easy either.Took me nearly three hours.”
Kieran looked down to find his coat shredded where the toad monster’s claws had sunk into him.The skin underneath, though, was unblemished.He poked at the spot where the toad’s claws had stabbed his lung; it didn’t even ache.
“I thought that wound was going to kill me,” Kieran admitted, still poking at the skin.
“It would have,” the woman agreed, nodding her head.At the widening of Kieran’s eyes, she explained: “You’ll have to excuse the vein—it’s been temperamental these last few months.Especially since those men started trying to steal my magic.”
Kieran’s head cocked to the side.“Yourmagic?Forgive my ignorance but…who exactly are you?”
The old woman let out an inelegant snort.“Verbena Dropleaf, the Witch of the Woods.I’ve spent my whole life protecting this vein, just as my mother and her mother and her mother before her did.It’s been our sacred duty since the first witch was gifted her magic from the earth.I know this vein’s magic like no one else alive.”
“Well, erm…it’s an honor to meet you, Verbena.I’m Kieran.”He dusted off his clothes as he straightened up.“How…did I get here?”
Verbena pointed to a ladder leaning against the wall.Tilting his head up, Kieran realized that it led to a wood trapdoor in the ceiling.“Luckily, that toad dropped you right by my front door.I pulled you in before any of the other men could notice.”
Kieran blinked.So hehadseen movement in the moss when he and Klaus arrived—it must have been this woman watching them.Regardless, it was hard to believe a woman of Verbena’s age and stature could have managed to haul him inside, but again, if she had some kind of connection to a magic vein, who knew what power she had at her disposal.
Kieran cleared his throat.“I should thank you for saving me, then.Considering the week I’ve had, I really thought I was a goner.”
Verbena, however, didn’t seem interested in harping on that fact any longer.“I have a question for you.”
“Oh, um—go ahead.”What in the world could a powerful witch like her want with someone like me?
“That boy up above,” she said, inclining her head as she gazed at Kieran.“From what I saw, you’d never even met him before.He’s a stranger to you, yet you nearly died for him.Why?”
Kieran thought back to the image of Sebastian lying there in the dirt, clearly too hurt to protect himself.He pursed his lips as he mulled it over.He thought of the silent scream on the other boy’s lips and the terror in his eyes.
Well,Kieran thought,no sense lying.
“I guess…I know how it feels to be helpless,” he explained, eyes wandering to his hands.He remembered how they’d grown skeletal before Delilah broke his fatal curse.He’d been able to see every vein and joint through the papery skin—an ever-presentreminder that he’d been flirting with death.“And for a long time, I dreamed about the day some hero would come along and save me.”
He looked up, meeting Verbena’s huge eyes.He saw himself reflected in her spectacles, shoulder-length blond curls a mess and clothes stained with drying blood.Still, he looked a thousand times healthier than he ever had before.He wasn’t stick thin or gaunt as he was before his curse broke, and his cheeks had filled in.His skin was no longer pallid and cold to the touch.He just looked like a normal almost-eighteen-year-old.
He took a breath.“Not everyone gets that.But I did.So it seemed right to try to be that for someone else.”
