Nate Ironwood came to Heartwood to marry a queen he had never met. He was two meters tall, with a grizzled beard and a battle axe slung across his back. In the last tavern before the forest, a drunk had laughed at him. The woodland queen, the man said, had turned away every suitor for ten years. Kings. Warlords. A prince with a fleet of ships. Nate paid for the man's ale and left. He liked long odds. He walked into the forest at dawn and found trouble by noon. The trees here grew wrong. Bark split and blackened. Whole branches sagged with rot. Nate had heard the rumors that drew him this far: something was killing the elves' forest, and the queen could not stop it. A sharp voice cut the quiet. "You'll want to put that axe down." He looked up. A tiny fairy hovered near his face. She had butterfly wings and a small crown of confidence. She looked him over the way a merchant weighs a coin. "Big man," she said. "Big axe. Small brain, probably." She flicked her hair. "Lucky for you, I'm the most beautiful guide in this whole forest. Also the only one who'll talk to you." "I'm looking for the queen," Nate said. The fairy laughed. "Everyone is. She eats men like you for breakfast." She darted toward a massive tree ahead. Its trunk was wide as a house. Flowers of every color crowded its crown. Small wooden homes nestled in the branches. But half the blossoms had gone brown and curled. "This tree is dying," the fairy said, and for once she sounded serious. "When it dies, we all leave. The queen loves this tree more than any suitor." She spun to face him. "So if you want her heart, warrior, you won't win it with that axe." Nate studied the sick tree. He set his hand against the trunk. The bark felt cold and damp, like meat gone bad. Then he heard it. Deep inside the wood, something scraped and shifted. Something large. The fairy's wings stopped. "That," she whispered, "is why no one comes here anymore." A crack ran up the trunk. Chunks of bark fell away. From the hollow root pushed a shape of stone and moss, tall as Nate and twice as wide. It had a face like split rock. Its fists were the size of stumps. The thing that was eating the tree had made itself a body. Nate pulled his axe free. He came for a queen. He found her forest instead, and the enemy killing it. "Go warn them," he told the fairy. "Tell the queen a warrior is buying her time." The fairy shot up into the branches. Nate set his feet in the roots. The stone creature turned its rock face toward him and roared.

The stone thing swung a fist like a stump. Nate rolled clear. His axe bit into its arm and skidded off. The blade left a pale scratch and nothing more. He backed toward the great tree's roots, breathing hard. The creature's skin was bark and mossy rock, cracked into plates. Every plate held. Nate had one axe and no idea where the beast could bleed. It came again. Nate ducked under the blow and struck its knee. The impact rang up his arms and numbed his hands. The knee held. The creature grabbed him by the chest and lifted him off his feet. Its grip crushed the air from his lungs. Up close he saw the moss glowing faint green in the cracks. The light was strongest at its throat, where a seam split the bark. That seam was the only soft place on it. Nate hooked his arm around a thick branch overhead and heaved. He tore free of the grip and dropped behind the beast. It turned slow, hunting him. He needed height to reach the throat, and the tree gave it to him. He climbed the roots to a low limb near the fairy homes. Blossoms brushed his face. Half were brown and dying. The creature reached up and ripped a limb from the trunk. The whole tree groaned. Fairy homes cracked and fell. Nate saw then what the fight was costing. Each blow the beast landed on the tree killed it faster. He could not win by waiting. He had to end it now. He waited for the beast to roar. Its mouth opened, and the seam at its throat stretched wide. Nate jumped. He fell with both hands on the axe and drove the blade into the glowing crack. The axe sank deep. Green light burst out. The creature staggered and clawed at its own neck. Nate held on and dragged the blade sideways. Bark split. Stone cracked. The beast dropped to its knees, then fell. Nate rolled clear as it struck the roots and went still. He stood over it, chest heaving. The thing that ate the tree was dead. But the trunk was torn open where the limb had ripped away. Sap ran dark from the wound. The blossoms above him kept curling brown, faster now, as if the beast's death had loosed something worse inside the wood. A voice came from the branches. Sharp. Cold. Not the fairy's. "You killed it too late." Nate looked up. A young woman crouched on a limb above him. Black cat ears twitched atop her head. A black tail lashed behind her. Her purple eyes moved from the dead beast to the bleeding tree, then to him. "The queen sent me to see who was making all this noise," she said. "You saved nothing, big man. You just opened the door."