Page 80 of The Queen's Box

They left the arcade behind, and the palace noise faded, replaced by birdsong and the distant rush of water. Cobblestones gave way to packed earth and then loamy soil. Trees rose around them, not the manicured trees from the gardens but wilder, taller trees that Willow didn’t know the name of, tangled with moss and trailing vines.

They reached a clearing, a sunlit circle of grass and small flowers, and Severine stopped. Willow stopped alongside her. At the center of the clearing was a low pool, ringed in stone and overgrown with reeds. The water was thick and green, and pond scum blanketed its surface.

“You’re here for a reason, as you know,” Severine said. “That’s why you felt the pull.” She took Willow’s hand and pulled her closer to the pond. “I told you that Serrin is half mortal. His father was human.”

Willow raised her eyebrows. “Was?”

“I’m afraid he proved to be something of a disappointment,” Severine said.

Willow wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“But Serrin has you now,” Severine said. “And you can give him what no one else can.”

Willow looked at the pond and frowned. She didn’t like the way it smelled. She didn’t like the film of leaves and sticks and bits of waterlogged fluff that made it heavy with decay. And she had no idea what she could give Serrin that had anything to do with this foul and stagnant place.

Severine knelt beside the pond and gestured for Willow to join her.

Willow reminded herself that she sometimes got things wrong. She often got things wrong. Cole and the mud, forexample. The boy with the patchy buzz cut who smiled with such purity at the mention of sweet blue sugar.

She swallowed and knelt beside Severine, resolving to be open to whatever came next.

A hush wrapped around her, the same sort of hush she’d felt in Deadman’s Hollow, at the trunk of the Stillwood Tree.

“Oh,” she breathed, knowing now that this was one of the places where the veil between worlds was thin.

“Do you know what to do?” Severine asked.

Willow tightened with nerves. Was this one more test, one more chance to prove herself unfit?

But—no. Oryes, but no one wanted her to fail. Ash wasn’t here to say, “Really, Willow? Fairytales and magic, at your age?”

She closed her eyes and sent exploratory tendrils of herself toward the pond. What she sensed was a deep and silentwaiting. A magic that didn’t judge but simply was.

“I think so,” she said. “Sort of.”

“Then begin.”

Willow opened her eyes and held one hand over the water’s surface. It wasn’t so different from the water in Amira’s scrying bowls, after all. Greener. Murkier. Collected not in a silver bowl but in the cupped hands of nature herself.

“You must want it,” Severine said gently. “Not out of hunger. Out of love. Think of Serrin.”

Willow thought of the boy beneath in the portraits, the boy carved in stone. She thought of the boy she’d seen in her dreams, his eyes the color of storm clouds, his hand reaching out for her.

She would reach back, then. She plunged her hand into the water, and fronds twined around her wrist. Her palm brushed something warm. Something that was flesh, not plant. Living.

She closed her fingers around it and pulled it out of the pond—a tiny sodden bird. It was soaked and shivering, its feathers indisarray. Its eyes were sealed shut. Its fragile heart raced against her skin.

“Oh, Willow,” Severine said reverently. “Oh, my brilliant girl.” She extended her cupped hands.

Willow hesitated. The bird was barely breathing.

“What will happen to it?” she asked.

“It willbecome,” said Severine.

“Become what?”

“Part of something larger.” Severine’s eyes welled, and her smile trembled with gratitude. Relief. “Part of Serrin.”

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