Amara Hollow woke with pond water in her lungs and dirt under her nails. She did not remember climbing out of the grave, only that the curse had spat her back up short of finished. Her hair hung wet against her cheeks. Her eyes would not focus on the moon. Somewhere behind her ribs, a small warm thing was still burning, and she understood, without being told, that if she let it go out she would not wake again. She crawled toward the only shape she knew. The cottage sat crooked at the edge of the trees, half its roof gone, the door hanging by one hinge. She had lived there before the drowning. She wanted to lift the curse and go back inside as a girl and not a wet thing on her hands and knees. Something in the undergrowth noticed her. She felt it the way a rabbit feels a shadow. It was older than the curse that killed her. It had been waiting under the roots for a soul thin enough to swallow whole, and hers was almost thin enough. The vines at the treeline began to shift. Red flowers opened on ropes of green muscle. The tendrils reached for her ankles and pulled. Amara did not scream. She had no breath for it. She dug her fingers into the mud and dragged herself another foot toward the cottage steps. The white rabbit came out from under the porch. Red eyes. A mouth full of crowded teeth. It had been hers before, and it remembered. It bounded past her face and tore into the nearest vine. Sap sprayed. The flowers hissed and drew back an inch. It was not enough. More vines came. Something bigger moved behind them, breaking wood, snuffling. A shape pushed through the trees on two legs, broad as a bear, snouted like a pig, its small eyes fixed on her. The hungry thing had found a body to wear. The rabbit shrieked and threw itself at the beast's ankle. The beast kicked. The rabbit tumbled into the weeds and did not get up fast. Amara's hand closed on something cold in the mud. A hilt. A dagger she did not remember burying. Purple light bled up between her fingers and the vines flinched from it. The runes on the blade warmed against her palm like a pulse that was not hers. The beast lunged. Amara rolled onto her back and drove the blade up into its gut with both hands. The purple light went into it. The beast made a sound like a kettle and folded sideways into the vines, which curled around their own master and dragged it down under the roots. The undergrowth went still. Amara lay in the mud with the amulet burning in her fist. The warm thing behind her ribs was smaller now. Something inside the cottage had heard the fight, and was walking to the door.

Amara lay in the mud with the dagger still warm in her hand. The purple light along the blade dimmed to a low pulse. The cottage door groaned. Something stepped out onto the broken porch. It was not a person. It stood on two legs like a man, but its head was a goat's, long-jawed, with two black horns curling up past the sagging roofline. Old scars marked its chest in crossed lines, as if someone had tried to seal it shut. A torn cloak hung from one shoulder. Its eyes caught the dagger's light and burned red. Amara could not run. Her legs would not answer. The warm thing behind her ribs had shrunk to the size of a coin. She had one strike left in her, maybe. If she used the dagger, it would drain more of her. If she waited and it was hungry, she would not get another chance. The fiend stepped down off the porch. In its clawed hand it carried a whip of dark metal and leather, the barbs glowing a sick pink along their edges. It dragged the whip through the mud as it came. The vines at the treeline shrank back from it. Amara raised the dagger. Her arm shook. The purple light flared. The fiend stopped. It looked at the blade. Then it looked at her face, at her wet hair, at the mud on her hands. Something moved behind its red eyes. It went down on one knee in front of her, slow, keeping the whip low and flat against the ground. "Put it down, child," it said. Its voice was low and cracked, like a man who had not spoken in years. "I gave that knife to your mother." Amara did not lower the dagger. She did not know what a mother was to her anymore. But the vines had feared him, and he had not struck. The white rabbit crawled out of the weeds. One of its back legs dragged. It hopped to Amara's hip and pressed against her, teeth bared at the fiend, but it did not attack. It watched him the way a dog watches a face it half remembers. Amara let the dagger tip lower. Just an inch. The fiend saw it and did not move closer. "The river gave you back wrong," he said. "I can walk you the rest of the way. But you have to choose it. I can't carry a child who won't be carried." Amara's mouth tasted like pond water. She thought of the cottage behind him, the black doorway, the curse still tightening under her skin. She thought of the coin of warmth behind her ribs. She turned the dagger around and offered him the hilt. The fiend took it. The purple light went out. He tucked the whip through a loop at his belt and lifted her out of the mud. The rabbit followed them up the porch on three good legs.