If I could speak, I’d tell her I came here to help her. To help us all. I’d tell her that I’m not evil. That I’m not entirely good, but I never meant to bring her sorrow. I’d tell her I’m terrified of what my death means for Tiressia, and that I’m worried about leaving her alone, because she doesn’t realize how alone she might truly be or what evil has yet to come.
I would tell her to go to Littledenn. To see if all the women and children in the root cellar survived. I’d tell her to get them out of the vale, though where they might go, I cannot fathom.
I fear war is coming, the likes of which Northlanders have never seen. The Prince of the East has indeed walked inside the Shadow World. He also has power he should not have, a living amalgam of all the things people claim: shadows, souls, and sin.
In truth, my death will weaken the Eastlanders’ chances of success at conquering the Summerlands, and I tell myself that I’m ready to sacrifice all.
But it’s what I’ll leave behind that Tiressia must fear. I am salvation and damnation. There cannot be one without the other.
Something in Raina’s eyes shifts from dark to light. She returns to me and kneels in the grass, ash falling all around. Conflict swirls in her irises, but as the last breaths of life slip from my body, she lifts her slender hands and, with the most graceful movements I’ve ever seen, begins to sing.
The first time I rouse, I see nothing but a smoke-filled sky, and it hurts to breathe. I’m lying next to a body that folds around mine, warm and comforting, and for a heartbeat, I think it’s my mother.
But a little death thrums against my chest, nestled away in a deep corner of my heart. It isn’t hers, and that thought brings overwhelming sadness that sweeps me back into darkness. At least the stolen death feels like it’s exactly where it belongs.
Inside me.
A deep voice meets my ears. “Come, little beauty,” it whispers, and I’m dimly aware of being carried away, the crumbling cinders of my village fading fromsight.
The second timeI open my eyes, a long, black cloak sweeps over me like a blanket. The world no longer burns, and I think I’m in the vale, the pale light of morning breaking through the clouds. I’m atop a horse, strong arms cradling me, hands holding fast to the reins. I hear thechink chink clinkof a bridle, the soft thud of hooves, and I notice an unmistakable sway rocking me back to sleep.
Before I succumb, I look at the bearded face of the man who holds me, and he meets my stare. My head rests on his shoulder, his mouth so close that the warmth of his breath drifts over my lips.
“It’s all right. Rest.”
My heart pounds, something inside me screaming,get away,while another part of me wants to be closer. I shouldn’t be with him, but I am, and I’m too tired to question where we’re going. My eyes close—I’ve no command over them—and I drift, curling against the Witch Collector’s heat.
The soft murmurof the stream flowing along the outskirts of our village wakes me for the third time. I lie on a bed of crushed, tall grass beneath the canopy of a great oak tree. Its leaves flutter and rustle overhead. I’m folded in a dark cloak that smells like spices and sandalwood, and maybe juniper. The fabric also carries the scent of smoke and a thousand deaths, a scent that rattles my brain fully awake.
I bolt upright and flinch, bracing my breastbone with my hand. My chest aches like a god pounded it with their fist.
Wary, I take in my surroundings. A warhorse—black as a moonless night—drinks from the stream that moves on lazily as ever, as though the rest of the world has no notion of the devastation that transpired at Silver Hollow last night.
And at the water’s edge squats the Witch Collector.
His jet hair—damp and untied—hangs down his back in waves. He wears fitted leather breeches, cracked with age, and a loose whitelinen tunic marked by ragged tears and bloodstains at the sides and sleeve.
He’s a contradiction—that’s the thought fluttering through my mind. A towering, intimidating Collector—hard, unstoppable, and unyielding. Yet here in the valley, he kneels, wide shoulders soft, hair lifted just so by a breeze. That dark head bows in reverence, and in his hand rests a bundle of plucked stardrops.
I think of the way Finn touched me with one of the flowers Mother braided in my hair and lift my hand to feel for them. They’re gone now.
One by one, the Witch Collector casts petals into the unhurried current where hundreds of blossoms float away to the river. “A stardrop for every soul,” he says, whispering the words like a prayer.
It isn’t lost on me that he’s performing a ritual ofmypeople. In Silver Hollow, Littledenn, Penrith, and Hampstead Loch, it’s customary to say a prayer to the Ancient Ones for the newly dead and provide a simple offering of the valley’s most beloved bloom.
He turns to look at me, and a charge sparks the air between us again. A shiver dances across my skin. I want to dismiss it as disgust, but that would be a lie.
It’s his eyes. Something about them makes me want to look closer, like I might see a whole universe if I peer hard enough. But it’s just the color. I didn’t think it could be any bolder, any more penetrating. Yet here in the vale, with daylight rising, his eyes shine like emeralds.
“How do you feel?” His voice is soft and kind and calm, unlike the way it sounded when he shouted his warning through the village.
I don’t know how to answer. I feel like I’m floating in a dream. Any second, someone will shake me awake. It will be the morning after Collecting Day, and my shattered world will piece itself back together again. But my throat is raw and dry from soot, and my blue gown is now the color of a stormy sky with brown splotches covering the skirt and bodice.
And my hands…They’re trembling, and they’re caked in ash and old blood. Blood that belongs to the warriors I killed. Blood that belongs to my mother. Blood that belongs to a vile prince.
The Witch Collector exchanges the stardrops for a half-scorched wooden bowl filled with stream water and reaches me inthree long strides. I quake harder. Mother used to say that grief always strikes when we least expect it, and that we rarely realize how those we love inhabit even the most seemingly inconsequential parts of our lives. It’s in those moments that the pain of their absence strikes so much deeper, because the time we took for granted suddenly shines in sharp relief.
Like right now, as I stare at Mother’s dish.
