Seraphyne had lured a hundred men to her hilltop house, and not one of them was the sorcerer she needed. She stood at her carved balcony and watched the mist curl against the painted beams. Half sylph, half succubus, she drew mortals the way flowers draw flies. But her succubus half slept inside her, locked. Long ago the ancient sorcerer had stolen a heart that held the key to her true power. Lure him, drain him, and she would finally wake whole. One problem remained. She had no idea where he hid. So she had spent her nights draining travelers, chasing rumors. Every one died with the same empty answer. No one knew the old man's door. The trail was dust, and Seraphyne was running out of victims and patience. Tonight she tried something new. She walked into the hollow below the hill, where a twisted tree grew with a swing dangling from its branches. The bark bled thin red light through black cracks. A figure crouched in the limbs, horned and winged, part of the wood itself. It was a spirit of her mother's bloodline, older than the forest. "You again," the tree-spirit said. Its voice scraped like roots pulling from soil. "Still half a thing." "I need the sorcerer," Seraphyne said. "The one who took the heart. Tell me where he sleeps." The spirit laughed. "I do not know his door. Nothing living does." It uncurled one long arm toward the thorned bush beside the trunk. Ember-red leaves smoked in the dark. "But that drinks from every corner of the wood. Feed it your blood. It will show you what it has seen." Seraphyne drew her nail across her palm. She pressed the cut to the thorns. Pain shot up her wrist as the bush pulled hard, draining her the way she drained men. Her knees buckled. The leaves flared bright, then bent together into a single shape. A blue butterfly lifted from the embers, wings shaped like a small dragon. It beat its wings once and hung in the air before her. "It carries the scent of his magic," the spirit said. "Follow it. It flies straight to the one who made the heart bleed." The butterfly darted north, past the Amethyst crown of a distant tree, down into the deep wood. Seraphyne pressed her bleeding hand to her chest and smiled. For the first time, she had a path. But the bush had taken more than she expected. Her legs shook. Her charm felt thin, scraped raw. She understood the cost now. To follow the guide, she would have to leave her hilltop house and hunt in the wild wood, far from her victims, weaker with every mile. The sorcerer's door was no longer a mystery. Reaching it alive was.