Page 57 of Cursed Crowns

“Actually, there is a wolf,” Rose cut in, feeling sorry for the boy. “Her name is Elske, and she won’t eat you, Pog. Just give her some food when she arrives and then bring her to me.”

Meredia smirked. “So you didn’t see the wolf either, Fathom?”

“Oh, hush, Meredia. You know very well the first rule of Seeing:No Gloating.” Fathom extended his hand to Rose. “Watch the leaves, Your Majesty. The treeline is rife with traps.”

Rose took the old man’s hand, but the moment they touched, he stiffened. Where Meredia’s gaze had turned to fog, Fathom’s frosted over. “Break the ice to free the curse. Kill one twin to save another.”

Rose snatched her hand away as Glenna’s words came hurtling back to her. She still had no idea what they truly meant, but with Wren now in Gevra, plus her strange nightmare last night, Fathom’s words only deepened her worry.

The frost in the seer’s gaze cleared, but he looked unsettled now. “But that’s not it,” he muttered, to himself. “That’s not why you’ve come.”

“We’re here to find the lost Sunkissed Kingdom,” said Rose, before another vision could rise up and threaten to sweep them all away in a tide of panic. Better to get what they came for, and deal with one problem at a time. “Can you help us?”

The seers exchanged a look. “Come,” said Fathom. “We will do our best.”

While Pog went to fetch the horses, Rose, Shen, and Kai followed the seers through the valley of crumbling towers. The ground was bursting with leafy bushes, creeping vines, and springy moss, the starcrests flitting between the waterfalls and casting droplets over them as they went. The towers themselves were impossibly tall, but Rose couldn’t help noticing how most of them had fallen into disrepair.

“How many of you are living down here?” she asked, as she traced an orange wallflower growing from the grooves of a tower.

“There used to be hundreds of us,” said Meredia. “More than enough to fill every tower, and the surrounding woods, too. But now we are less than twenty. The rest are sleeping. We prefer to rise at dusk, so we may read the patterns of the starcrests at night. That is when they are most potent.”

“And I suppose you use the Poisonweed Valley to avoid being discovered,” said Kai.

Meredia smiled. “Most wanderers never make it to the woods.”

He puffed his chest up. “Well, you clearly didn’t account for this pair of brave desert warriors.”

“Or the healer who saw fit to help them when they passed out,” said the seer, her hazel eyes twinkling.

“And yet they still haven’t thanked me,” said Rose as they came to a stop at one of the towers. It was here that Meredia left them, journeying on to the next one to alert the cook of their arrival.

Fathom pushed on the wooden door, and it opened with a groaning creak. The room at the bottom of the tower was warm and smelled of sage. A threadbare rug sprawled across the stone floor, which was lined with more bookshelves—and books—than Rose had ever seen before. A spiraling staircase hugged the stone wall, winding up and out of view, where silvery blue lights flickered from faraway alcoves, lighting their way toward the sky.Everlights.Rose smiled, thinking of Wren. She wished her sister was here to see this place, too.

Fathom paused with his foot on the bottom step. “Follow me,” he said. “We must visit the Moonlit Menagerie.”

The Moonlit Menagerie was well named. The room at the top of the tower had been painted to resemble the night sky, with each tinysparkling star marked by a gemstone. Up here, the walls were lined with more shelves, brimming with all manner of items, including ticking clocks in the shape of trees and mountains, crystalline birds that chirped when touched, cracked vases and dusty goblets, ancient tea sets, an entire row of giant conch shells, boxes upon boxes of ornate hairpins and unpaired earrings, hourglasses filled with sand of every color, and hundreds of dusty parchment scrolls.

The floor was covered in a patchwork of rugs and strewn with oversized pillows. While Rose examined Fathom’s bizarre collection of treasures, the seer shuffled over to a clock by the window—which lorded over the room like a second moon—and adjusted the hands on its face. There was a faint ticking noise as the clock resettled. “There now,” he muttered. “That should do it.”

Fathom reclined on one of the pillows, gazing up at the imaginary sky. “And now we seek the Sunkissed Kingdom. A place long lost to the sands of Eana.”

“Does he think those are real stars?” said Shen in a low voice.

“Probably,” said Kai, without bothering to whisper. “The old man’s mind is decaying, just like these towers. We should never have come here.”

Fathom traced a constellation with his finger. “To know how to find the kingdom, we must first discover how it became lost.” His hand got faster, his frown deepening. “This ceiling presents the movements of starcrests from years past. And oftentimes, we need the past to see the future.”

It was only then that Rose noticed the ceiling was moving. The gemstones were drifting back and forth, creating new patterns in the sky.

“Time is a slippery thing.” Fathom pointed to the giant moon clock.“That is why, to find what it is we seek, we often have to adjust it.”

Rose and Shen exchanged a dubious glance. But this time no one interrupted the old seer. They simply waited, watching the stars just as keenly, until, after what seemed like an eternity, Fathom sat bolt upright. “A map!” he burst out. “Yes, that’s exactly what you need!”

Kai folded his arms. “That was not worth the suspense, old man. The desert cannot be mapped.”

Fathom tsked. “Not a map of the terrain. A map of the heart.” He scrambled to his feet and scurried toward the shelves.

“No, no. Not this,” he said as he rummaged through his vast collection of scrolls. “Not that either. Hmmm. Oh! I forgot I even had this! Ugh, is thatmold? Never mind. Whereisthis blasted thing?” He tossed a glass orb over his shoulder, and Shen lunged to catch it before it shattered.

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