Kortana knelt at the edge of the woodcutter's camp and set down a fresh handful of flowers. Four mornings now. The deer watched from the ferns. The old crow, who feared nothing, sat hunched on her shoulder and trembled. She would win this man over. She would turn his axe into a shield for her forest. A bright flutter cut through the trees. A pink songbird with purple hearts on its wings landed on her wrist, chirping fast and frightened. It tugged at her sleeve, then flew deeper into the woods. Kortana followed. The songbird led her to a clearing she did not know. A huge yurt stood there, glowing with lanterns and rich cloth, smoke curling from its roof. A stranger's camp. Beyond it, stones rose in a ring around a locked chest with a red gem pulsing inside. Each stone showed a dead creature carved deep. A tree above bore words about power taken under the full moon. Kortana's breath caught. The woodcutter felled trees one by one. This stranger planned to drain the whole forest in a single night. She touched the chest. It hummed. Only a blade of true power could break this ring, and she had seen such a blade resting against the woodcutter's stump — a great rune-marked axe that shimmered like cold water. She turned back toward the camp, the crow tight against her neck. Winning the woodcutter's heart was no longer a slow gift of flowers. She needed his axe by the next full moon, or there would be no forest left to protect.

Kortana crept back toward the woodcutter's camp with the crow tight on her shoulder. She had to see the rune-marked axe again, to know if she could take it before the full moon. The camp came into view through the ferns, and she stopped short. It was not just a stump and a fire pit. A small hut of bark and mud stood under the pines, with a green roof and a tidy little window. A carved bird house rose on a post beside the door, painted with leaves and tiny flowers. Seeds had been scattered on its tray. The woodcutter fed birds. The old crow shivered, then lifted from her shoulder. He flew straight past the hut and landed on a wooden table where a scroll lay open under a stone. Kortana followed and bent close. The scroll was a prophecy, edges burned, ink fresh in places. She read the shaky words. "I will stop him with a magic blade." "A woodcutter must fell the trees to draw him out." The shimmering axe leaned against the table, runes glowing soft blue. The woodcutter was not destroying her forest for greed. He was baiting someone. He was hunting the stranger in the yurt. Footsteps crunched behind her. Kortana spun. A man in red robes stood at the tree line, hands folded, red eyes calm. "You are early," he said. "That is the small problem. The woodcutter knowing I am here — that second one is the complication. Nothing I cannot manage." The crow shrieked and flew. Kortana grabbed the scroll and ran. She had come for an axe and a heart to turn. She left with a secret that was not hers, an enemy who now knew her face, and the certain truth that the woodcutter was already her ally — if she could reach him before the man in red did.

Kortana ran with the scroll clutched tight, the crow flying low beside her. She did not stop until she reached the clearing behind the woodcutter's hut. There she unrolled the prophecy on a flat stone and read the burned edges again. New words had bled into the page, dark and wet. "The crown wakes when the guardian's foot crosses the threshold." Her hands went cold. She had already stepped inside the yurt. She turned and looked through the trees. The bright yurt glowed in the dusk, lanterns swinging, smoke curling from its peak. But something new stood beside it now. A tall stone tower had pushed up from the dirt, runes glowing soft blue along its sides. Moss climbed its base as if it had grown there for a hundred years. It had not been there an hour ago. Kortana crept closer, keeping low. Around the yurt, a ring of carved tablets had risen from the soil. Each one showed a small crown and, beneath it, a shape she knew was meant to be her. Her braid. Her hands. A thin line drawn from her wrist to the crown. The scroll was right. The ritual had started the moment she stepped inside. She pressed a finger to her wrist. A tiny cut she had not noticed beaded red. The tower pulsed in time with it. The crown was feeding on her, drop by drop, even from here. The crow landed on the scroll and tapped one word with his beak. "Sever." Kortana understood. The bleeding would not stop on its own. She needed the rune-marked axe, not later, not before the full moon — tonight. She tore a strip from her sleeve and bound her wrist tight. The pulse in the tower slowed, but it did not stop. She rolled the scroll and tucked it into her belt. The plan she had carried in was gone. A new one took its place, sharp and simple. Find the woodcutter. Show him the tablets with her face on them. Make him swing his axe for her before the man in red found them both. She ran toward the hut, the crow on her shoulder, her bound wrist throbbing like a second heart.