Sylvara pressed her palm to the heartroot and felt nothing answer. The great pale trunk stood at the center of her forest, older than her long watch, and she had come to wake it. If she could rouse the heartroot, every root and wing and hoof under her care would be bound together, warned as one. She needed that now. Something had walked through her woods last week and left no track, no scent, no shape she could name. She could not guard what she could not see. She needed more than her own eyes. Her hand slid down the bark. The wood stayed cold. She knew the trick required an old song, the binding-song the first trees had hummed to themselves before she existed. She had never learned it. The trees who remembered it had gone quiet a long time ago, and she had been too busy walking the borders to ask while she still could. She left the clearing and went to find the fox. The fortune teller lived at the forest's edge in a hollow lined with dried petals. Lavinia was an old acquaintance, useful when Sylvara needed to know a thing she could not see. Her fur was the wrong color for a fox, a washed lavender, and a pink rose sat behind one ear. She was shuffling a deck of cards when Sylvara ducked under the doorway. Every card she laid down came up upside-down. She turned them anyway. "You want the old song," Lavinia said, before Sylvara spoke. "You know it?" "No. I know who did." She tapped a reversed card. "My readings are broken. Someone cursed the sight. I can't promise what I see." "Tell me anyway." Lavinia looked at her a long moment. "The song isn't lost. It was written down. A book. Kept in a tower of pale stone, roses on the walls. Something lives inside. Gentle, they say. I wouldn't trust 'they.'" "Where." "That's the part I can't see. My last client came from there. I can't remember her face. I can't remember what she paid me." She set the deck down. "The curse eats the edges." Sylvara's wings pressed flat. She had hoped for a map. She had a rumor and a warning. "Take the rose," Lavinia said, pulling the bloom from behind her ear. "From the same bush as the tower's. If you find the bush, you're close." Sylvara took it. The thorns bit her thumb. She welcomed the sting; it was the first clear thing she had felt all day. She stepped back into her trees with a flower she did not grow and no direction to walk. The heartroot still slept behind her. Somewhere past her borders stood a tower she had never seen, holding a song she needed, guarded by a thing rumored kind. She had never left the forest before. She started walking toward its edge.

Sylvara walked out past her borders for the first time in her long life. The trees thinned. The ground turned to dry road. She kept the fox's rose in her hand and pointed her feet the way the wind pushed the petals. She did not know if that was a real sign. She had no better one. By midday her wings hung wrong. She stopped and shook them. Nothing changed. Her light, the small green shine she had carried since the old trees made her, had dimmed to almost nothing. She lifted a hand. The glow that should have run along her fingers barely showed. She was farther from her forest than she had ever been, and the forest was where her magic came from. Every step out was a step thinner. A cart passed. She tried to lift into the air to clear the ruts and dropped back down hard. Her knees hit gravel. She stayed there a moment, breathing, and understood she could not defend herself out here. A crow could take her. A dog could take her. She had walked out of her strength. She crawled off the road into the brush and tried to think. The rose in her fist had gone limp. She smoothed a petal between two fingers. Lavinia had said: if you find the bush, you're close. Sylvara had been walking blind. She needed to walk toward something. She pressed the rose to her mouth and whispered the fox's name into it, because she had nothing else. The petal warmed. It was not her magic. It was the fox's, left in the flower. It tugged, small and clear, toward the west. She followed the tug off the road, through a hedge, into a meadow she did not know. Her steps were slow. Her wings dragged. Halfway across the meadow her legs gave and she went down in the grass. Something large came through the grass toward her. She could not lift her hand to ward it off. It was a beast the size of a plow horse, with a lion's mane, a bear's shoulders, and the neat split hooves of a goat. It stopped a body's length from her and lowered its head. Its breath smelled of hay. It did not touch her. It waited. She remembered what the fox had said. Something lives inside. Gentle, they say. I wouldn't trust 'they.' She had no choice left. She reached up. The beast knelt. She climbed onto its back and lay flat against the warm mane. It rose and began to walk west, the way the rose had pulled. Sylvara closed her eyes. She had failed to hold herself up on the road. She had accepted a stranger's animal to carry her. She was being taken somewhere she had not chosen, by something she could not fight, toward a tower she still could not see.

The beast walked west all afternoon. Sylvara lay flat on its mane and watched the ground pass. Her wings would not fold right. Her light was almost gone. She tried to speak to the animal the way she spoke to the old trees, with a thought pressed behind the eyes. Nothing came back. The beast only walked. She tried words next. "Stop," she said into the mane. "Please." The ears flicked. The hooves kept their rhythm. She tried the small tongue the forest had taught her, the one she used for deer and thrushes. The beast huffed once and walked on. It did not know her. She did not know it. The sun dropped. The road bent. She smelled woodsmoke before she saw the roof. A low building sat off the track, pale pink and pale green in the last light, with window boxes and a painted sign. A tavern. Beside it, a stone pit burned with a green flame that threw no heat she could feel from the beast's back. The green pulled at her. It was the color of her own lost shine. The beast slowed. She sat up. If it passed the tavern, she was gone with it into the dark, and she did not know where the dark ended. She had to get off here. She had one thing left in her hand. She pulled the rose from her sleeve. The petals were dry now, but the fox's magic still hummed in the stem. She leaned forward and held the rose in front of the beast's eye. "Down," she said. "Down, please." The beast stopped. It sniffed the rose. Then it knelt in the dust beside the fire pit, slow and careful, the way it had knelt in the meadow. She slid off its shoulder and landed hard on her knees. The beast rose, turned, and walked back the way it had come. It did not look at her again. She sat in the dirt. The green fire crackled beside her. Her legs would not hold yet. She had gotten off, but she had gotten off nowhere she knew, and the beast had taken the road west with it. Then the tavern door opened. A small figure stepped out onto the step, purple fur in the green light, a fresh rose behind one ear. The fox who had sent her walking. The fox who had sat two days' road behind her, in another town, in another chair. Lavinia looked at Sylvara in the dirt. She looked at the retreating beast. She looked at the dying rose in Sylvara's fist. "You're early," Lavinia said. "That's bad." She came down the step and crouched in front of Sylvara. Her clipped voice did not rise. "Someone followed you," she said. "They're already inside."

Lavinia's words hung in the dust. Someone followed you. They're already inside. Sylvara pushed up onto her knees and looked past the fox. The green fire threw its light on the tavern step and the painted sign above the door. She had to get inside. She had to get off this road before whatever the fox meant found her sitting in the dirt. Then the beast turned back. It had walked maybe twenty paces down the road. Now it stopped, ears up, head swinging. Something in the ditch startled it. A shape lifted from the grass and flapped. The beast snorted and stamped, and the whole animal shied sideways, back toward the fire pit, back toward her. "Move," Lavinia said. "Now." Sylvara tried. Her legs folded. Her wings dragged. The rose in her fist was spent and she knew it. She had used the last of the fox's magic to make the beast kneel. There was nothing left in the stem to make it kneel again. The beast came on at a heavy trot. Not charging. Just afraid, and blind with it, hooves finding the same line she sat in. Lavinia darted sideways and shouted, and the beast did not turn. A small figure stepped out from behind the fire pit. A child. A red mushroom cap sat on his head like a hat that had grown there. More caps at his shoulders opened and closed on their own. Leaves for a shirt. Bare arms. He walked into the road between Sylvara and the beast as if he had been waiting for this exact moment and only now decided to spend it. He put one bare foot flat on the packed dirt and stood still. "Ground's loud here," he said. "Hold on." He hummed. It was a small sound, barely a sound at all. The dust near his foot shivered. The beast's next step landed wrong. It slowed. It stopped four paces from Sylvara and stood shaking, sides heaving, eyes rolling white. The child did not touch it. He kept humming. The beast lowered its head, blew out once, and walked past them both at a careful pace. It went around the tavern and out of sight. Spore Willowveil looked down at Sylvara. His face gave nothing. "You're bleeding," he said. "Knee." Lavinia was already at the step. "Inside. Both of you. He can see her later." Sylvara let the child take her elbow. He was smaller than she was and stronger than he looked. The spent rose fell from her hand into the dirt. She left it. She had nothing now but her own weight and a stranger's grip, and the tavern door was three steps away, and the person who had followed her was on the other side of it.

The child's grip tightened on Sylvara's elbow. Lavinia nudged the tavern door open with her nose. Warm air pushed out. Sylvara smelled honey, wet wood, and something green burning low. She stopped on the threshold. Whoever had followed her was inside. If she stepped in blind and looked at the wrong face too long, she would show them she did not know them. That was all a hunter needed. "Wait," Sylvara whispered. She crouched behind the doorframe. Her wings hung useless down her back. "One of them in there is mine. One is not. If I pick wrong, I'm done." Lavinia's ears flattened. The rose behind her ear had gone pale. "My sight is still cursed. I can't read the room for you." Spore Willowveil put his bare foot flat on the tavern's plank step. He closed his eyes. The mushroom caps at his shoulders opened once and stilled. "Floor talks," he said. "Give me a breath." He hummed, low, under his teeth. Sylvara felt the plank under her knee tremble. Dust lifted from the seam between two boards. "Four people sitting," Spore said. "One at the bar. Three at a table by the window. The one at the bar is heavy on the right foot. Keeps shifting. Waiting on the door." "Waiting for me," Sylvara said. "Table's easy. They've been there hours. Boots dry." He opened his eyes. "Bar stool is wet under it. Came in from the road tonight." Sylvara's chest went tight. "Which side of the room?" "Left as you go in. Under the shelf with the bottles." She made herself breathe. She could not walk in and stare at the bar. She could not walk in and avoid it either. Both would say the same thing. "Lavinia," she said. "Go to the bar. Beg scraps. Sit at his feet. If he flinches, we know." The fox slipped inside. Sylvara counted ten heartbeats. Then she stepped through the door with Spore at her elbow, eyes on the barkeep, only on the barkeep, as if she had never wanted anything but a drink and a bench. A stool scraped. To her left. Under the bottle shelf. A man stood halfway up, then sat again fast, because Lavinia had settled across his boots and was staring up at his face with pale, unblinking eyes. He looked at the fox. He looked at Sylvara. His hand went to his coat and stopped there. Sylvara knew him now. She did not know his name. She knew the shape of the shoulders that had walked behind her since the meadow. She crossed to the far table by the window and sat with her back to the wall. Spore climbed onto the bench beside her. Lavinia stayed on the man's boots like a weight. He could not leave without moving the fox. He could not move on Sylvara without leaving the stool. She had him pinned, and he had her named, and the night was only starting.

The hunter kept his hand inside his coat. Sylvara kept her eyes on him across the tavern floor. Lavinia sat on his boots. Spore sat beside Sylvara, humming so low it sounded like the room breathing. She could throw what magic she had left. One strike. But if she killed him, she killed the only mouth that knew who wanted her dead. She needed him talking, not bleeding. The tavern door opened behind her. Cold air pushed in. Boots hit the plank, heavy, then a claw. Heads turned at the bar. A woman near the window gasped and covered her mouth. "Sylvara." She knew the voice before she turned. Fennel Thornwing, the beast who had guarded her sister grove at the edge of the Thornwood for eleven years. Bat wings folded tight. Goat horns scraping the doorframe. Wolf teeth showing when he spoke, though he was the gentlest thing she had ever known. He crossed the room in three steps and stopped between Sylvara and the bar. "You are far from home," Fennel said. "So are you." "Grove is empty. Fairies gone. I came looking." His yellow eyes moved to the hunter. "That one smells wrong." The hunter tried to stand. Lavinia growled. Fennel set one clawed hand flat on the bar beside the man's cup. He did not touch him. He did not need to. "Coat," Fennel said. "Open it." The hunter opened his coat. A short knife. A folded paper. No crossbow, no vial. Sylvara crossed the room and took the paper. She unfolded it on the bar between the bottles and the wet ring under his stool. A drawing of her. Wings, hair, the curve of her jaw. Under it, three words in a hand she did not know: alive if possible. "Who paid you," she said. He looked at Fennel. He looked at the fox on his boots. He looked at the child humming on the bench. He decided. "A man in a pale tower," he said. "West of here. He said you would come for the book. He wanted you brought to him before you reached it." Sylvara's hands went cold. The tower she was walking toward. The book with the binding-song. The one thing that could wake the heartroot and pull every living thing in her forest under one shield. Someone in that tower had watched her leave her woods. Someone in that tower had sent this man to catch her at the door. "Was it you," she said, "who walked through my forest and left no track?" "No." His voice cracked. "He sent that first. To see if you would leave." She folded the paper. She put it in her pocket. She did not kill him. She had what she needed, and it was worse than a knife. "Tie him," she told Fennel. "He rides with us to the tower. If he lied, I will know at the door."

Fennel bound the hunter's wrists with a strip of harness leather and tied a second loop from the wrists to his own belt. The knot sat between them like a leash. Sylvara watched from the tavern step. The road west ran straight and open. Anyone on it would see three travelers and a bound man, and any bound man could shout. "He can't walk the road like that," she said. "One rider comes past, one farmer, and he calls for help. Word runs faster than we do." Fennel showed his teeth. "Gag him." "He'll work a gag loose in an hour. And a gagged man on a leash brings its own trouble." She looked at the hunter. He watched her back, patient. He knew what she knew. He only had to survive to the next stranger. Lavinia trotted out from behind the tavern, her odd rose fur catching the last light. A pale bloom sat behind her ear. She led them off the road, down a slope of wet grass, to a stone-rimmed pool she seemed to already know. Koi moved under the surface in slow bands of orange and white and blue. On a flat rock at the far edge sat a frog the size of a hound, pink as a tongue, blinking at them. "Why here," Sylvara said. "Because the frog owes me a favor," Lavinia said, "and the fish keep secrets." Sylvara knelt at the water. She had almost no magic left, but the pool held its own. She pulled the fox's rose from her collar and dipped the stem. The petals darkened. She spoke the hunter's name into the water, then the shape of what she needed: sleep, and silence, until the tower. The frog opened its mouth. A single clear note came out, low and wet. The koi turned as one. The hunter's knees gave. Fennel caught him under the arms before his head hit stone. "How long," Fennel said. "Two days. Maybe three." Lavinia's tail flicked. "He won't speak. He won't wake to shout. He'll walk if you lead him, and he'll stop if you stop." Sylvara pressed her palm to the hunter's cheek. His breath was even. His eyes were open, but nothing sat behind them. She felt the cost land in her own chest, a hollow under the ribs where her flight-magic used to live. She had spent almost all of it. "He rides," Fennel said, and lifted the man across his shoulders like a sack. Sylvara stood. The tower was still a day west. She had a silent prisoner, a fox with a curse on her sight, a child who could stop a charge with a hum, and a beast who would carry a grown man without a word. She had less magic than when she left home. She stepped back onto the road.

They walked west through the morning. The hunter walked between them, eyes open, mouth slack. Fennel kept a hand on his elbow. Sylvara kept her eyes on the road. A cart passed them near midday. The driver was a thin man with a boy beside him. He slowed his mule and stared at the hunter. Sylvara stepped close to the sleeping man and put a hand on his back, as if steadying a sick friend. The driver nodded and clicked his tongue. The mule moved on. "He saw," Fennel said, when the cart was small behind them. "He saw." "He'll tell it at the next inn. A big man leading a walking corpse. A fairy on the road." Sylvara had already counted the tellings. One driver. One boy. One inn. From an inn, word traveled fast, and every road west of here ran toward the pale tower. If the man in that tower heard about a sleeping hunter, he would not send another hunter. He would send something Sylvara could not put to sleep. Lavinia trotted back from the verge with the rose bright behind her ear. "There's a keep off the road. Lavender stone. Roses on the walls. The one who lives there takes in strays." "A monster," Fennel said. "A gentle one." Sylvara looked at the hunter's blank face. Two more days of sleep. Two more days of every farmer with eyes. "We hide him. We don't drag him." Lavinia led them off the road through wet ferns. The castle rose behind a screen of trees, pale purple stone laced with climbing roses. The gate stood open. Inside, the walls were pink and quiet. A tall bookshelf leaned against the far wall, carved with flowers, packed with worn spines. A boy stood beside the shelf. Green skin. Black hair. Red eyes that were kinder than his face. He held a book open on his palm like a plate. He did not startle when they came in. "He's asleep," Sylvara said, before the boy could ask. "Not dead. I did it. I need to leave him somewhere no one will talk about him." The boy looked at the hunter. Then at her. "People talk about me." "I know." "I can keep him in the cellar. Two days." "Three, maybe." He closed the book. "Fine." Fennel carried the hunter down a narrow stair. Sylvara stayed at the shelf. The boy watched her hands, not her face. "Why help," she said. "Nobody asked me to stay anywhere. You asked." When Fennel came back up, his hands were empty. Lavinia was already at the gate. "The road's clean now," Fennel said. "The road's clean," Sylvara agreed. The hunter was buried without a grave. The driver's story would find no walking corpse to match. She stepped back into the ferns. The tower was still west. She had a day's walk, no prisoner, and no proof.