Page 73 of The Queen's Box

She followed it, her heart full.

She walked past fungi the size of wagon wheels, their caps changing color. She glimpsed pools of still water that held hints of events that hadn’t yet happened, glimpses of herself in rooms she had never seen. A door with no handle. A child’s hand reaching. A boy’s face, pale and blurred.

She paused at the sight of the boy, unnerved.

The moment passed. It was just magic being magic. Whatever it meant, it was something good.

The path rose, cresting a ridge, and below—nestled against the curve of a distant mountain—she saw the court. It looked nothing like Hemridge. Nothing like Atlanta. Its towers stretched tall and wild, grown more than built, stone threaded with moss and shimmer. The spires were uneven—some coiledlike shells, others tapering like leaves. Bridges arched between rooftops, elegant and impractical, draped with long pennants that fluttered though there was no wind.

Balconies bloomed from the walls like petals. Vines spilled from rooftop gardens in bursts of blossom and color. Windows caught the lavender sky and bent it into prisms. The whole city shimmered as if it were alive. Not a dream but a promise—somewhere inside those towers was Serrin, who’d been waiting all this time.

She hadn’t properly met him, but she knew him. Didn’t she?

He would understand her.

He would be kind.

He would see her for who she really was. All she had to do was go to the court and find him.

“The promised one arrives at last,” came a voice from the left.

Willow jumped, pivoting to see a woman step out from behind a stone arch. She positioned herself in a wide stance, this woman, her hands clasped behind her back in the way of a soldier too experienced to bother with fear.

She was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a white uniform—a blouse with billowing sleeves, trousers with cuffed legs—bound by a silver sash. She said, “I am Aesra, Secret Sister to the queen. And you”—she looked Willow up and down—”are the one the queen has been expecting.”

Aesra turned. “Come,” she commanded.

Willow hesitated.

Aesra glanced back and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you not hear me? You have been summoned. Shall I drag you, or will you walk?”

“Walk,” Willow said. “I’m coming. I’m coming!”

The castle gates groaned open at their arrival, and Willow followed Aesra inside.

They crossed a wide courtyard of black stone where trees grew in perfect symmetry along the walls. Soon, a great stairway rose before them. Willow climbed without speaking, her breath quickening as they ascended.

At the top of the stairs was a set of tall doors. Aesra pressed her palm to the seal at their center, and they opened. Beyond was a long, vaulted corridor lined with statues of creatures with wings and antlers and too many eyes. Willow’s footsteps sounded small against the flagstones.

At the end of the corridor waited another set of doors, taller than the last. These led into the throne room, vast and regal. Willow’s body reacted before her mind did—knees tensing, throat tightening, a cold flush rising up the back of her neck. It wasn’t fear, exactly. More like awe sharpened into vigilance.

The ceiling arched high above in faceted glass, each pane tinted a faint rose gold. Along the walls, tall iron sconces threw firelight across the space. At the far end of the chamber, raised on a platform of dark stone, was a throne made of blackened branches twisted together with lengths of bone.

Willow thought of goats and skulls and little girls with dead, flat eyes. She shook the image away.

“Willow,” said the woman seated on the throne. Something in the angle of her jaw was familiar, or maybe it was the tilt of her head. Familiar but slippery—like a goldfish flitting behind a curtain of pondweed.

But the question of whether Willow had seen this woman before fell away when Willow took in the full force of her beauty.

Her hair was black, cascading in a single block of color past her shoulders. Her skin glowed, untouched by time. She wore a crown of silver thorns that strained skyward in sharp, elegant points.

Willow’s lips parted like a child’s. It was Severine. Queen Severine, whom Willow both knew and didn’t know in ways she didn’t understand.

Severine dipped her head in greeting. “Welcome.”

Willow’s feet carried her across the room, and a pair of attendants appeared from behind the columns, each carrying a silver tray. A third emerged silently and pulled a high-backed chair from the shadows, placing it just below the platform—close enough that Willow could see every detail of the queen’s face but not so near as to suggest for a moment that Willow was an equal.

Willow sat, and the attendants placed the trays before her.

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