Thorn Nightwhisper knelt in the moss at the base of the hollow tree and counted the names she had gathered. Twelve so far. Twelve fae, low and forgotten, who would kneel to her when she took the withered throne at the heart of Copsefire. She needed forty before the courts noticed. She had planned on a full year. She would not get it. The warning came at dusk, brought by a small tribe of hollow-eyed fairies who owed her a debt from the last frost. Their leader spoke through the mouth of the tree, her voice thin as wet paper. A herald was walking the wilds. He carried a silver rod and a court seal. He was asking after Thorn by name. Thorn stood. If the herald reached her before she was ready, the high courts would learn she had been binding minor fae to a private oath. They would kill her for it. They would kill everyone who had knelt. "Where is he now?" Thorn asked. "Two ridges east," the fairy said. "He walks slow. He stops to eat." Thorn had until morning. She could not fight a herald. Heralds could not be killed without the court feeling the cut. But a herald could be turned around, if he found what he was looking for and it was the wrong thing. She went to the ghost first. Selene Nightshade waited where she always waited, at the edge of the birch stand, only visible between moonrise and dawn. Thorn had promised her the deed to her stolen land in exchange for service. Thorn did not yet have the deed. Selene knew this. "I need a face," Thorn said. "Yours. For one night." "To do what?" "Meet a herald. Tell him you are Thorn Nightwhisper. Tell him you are a hedge-witch who trades in bad rumors. Send him home." Selene watched her. "And if he takes me back to the court instead?" "He cannot take a ghost. He will report a dead end." Thorn held out an iron coin. "After, I bring you the deed. Sworn." Behind her, a voice said, "I'll go with her." Rowan Switched stepped out from the ferns, barefoot, plain-faced. Thorn had found Rowan a week ago by the same iron-coin trick Rowan used on strangers at market. "A herald will believe a witch faster if she has a servant. Two liars beat one." Thorn agreed. She watched them go east through the trees, the ghost girl and the changeling, carrying her name between them like a borrowed coat. At dawn the fairies returned. The herald had turned back. He carried a report: Thorn Nightwhisper was a minor hedge-witch, harmless, not worth a second trip. Thorn had bought her year. She had also spent it. She now owed a deed to a ghost and a debt she had not named to Rowan, and both of them knew her true face.

Thorn had bought her year. Now she needed a map. She had spent months binding fae to an oath sworn on the withered throne of Copsefire, and she had never seen where the throne sat. The old songs said it grew inside the forest somewhere, a dead thing on a living hill. No one she asked would speak the location plain. Without it, her twelve bound followers were kneeling to empty air. She went back to the hollow tree at dusk. The trunk was carved with old faces that opened their eyes when she pressed her palm flat to the bark. The small tribe of hollow-eyed fairies gathered on the roots, lanterns in their hands. Their leader looked at her from the mouth of the tree and waited. "I need the seat," Thorn said. "The throne at the heart. Where does it stand?" The fairy shook her head. "We do not speak that road. The one who sits near it listens. Speak it and he hears his name." Thorn set an iron coin on the root. Then a second. Then a third. The fairies flinched from each one. "I am not asking for a road. I am asking for a direction. One word. Point." Rowan stepped out of the ferns behind her, barefoot, plain. Rowan said nothing, only watched the fairies count the coins with their eyes. The leader's mouth twisted. She lifted one thin arm and pointed north through the trees, past a stand of white birches, toward a rise Thorn had walked past a hundred times without looking twice. "Under the hill," the fairy whispered. "The dead crown is under the hill. But he sits above it. Do not go by moon." Thorn went by moon. She could not wait. Rowan came with her, because Rowan had not been asked to stay. They climbed the rise while the moon rose full and hard behind them, a pale woman's face in the sky. At the crown of the hill Thorn found a ring of flat stones and, at its center, a stump of black wood grown through with roots. The throne. Withered. Real. She reached to touch it. A long shadow stretched across the stones from behind her, ears rising above a narrow head. She turned. A tall figure stood at the tree line, still as furniture, shaped like a man with a hare's skull. Behind him, another figure walked out of the dark between two birches, crowned in black thorns, robed in green and violet. The Fey Dread Monarch smiled at her with small even teeth. "You've found my chair," he said. "Now name yourself, little witch, so I know what to write on the stone." Rowan spoke first, flat and quick. "She is nobody. She is leaving." Rowan took Thorn's wrist and pulled. They ran. Thorn knew where the throne sat now. She also knew who sat above it, and that he had seen her face.