Forever did slay.
As the lyrics leave her lips, something changes beneath her hands. The wall begins to soften, to give. Could she have found the rift so soon? She stops singing, and the wall is once again impenetrable. She backtracks but can’t find the spot again. She stares at the stones for a second, and then something occurs to her. She tries singing the lullaby again. And the wall bends inward, rippling like a body of water.
She sings louder, and as she does she steps forward, and forward . . . and through.
At first, the Borderlands do not appear threatening, and she wonders if Heath has overstated their dangers. The sun breaks open, lighting up a thousand shades of green in the canopy above her. Birds dart between branches, chirruping. Fresh pinecones crunch beneath her shoes.
After several steps, Aurora turns quickly—but the wall is still visible. She breathes out in relief, then gets an idea. She pulls the necklace of rubies and pearls out of her cloak pocket. One by one, she removes the jewels. She bends down and leaves one at the base of a tree. Then she moves deeper into the forest. Every ten feet or so, she lays down another, leaving a glimmering trail. As long as there’s enough light to see by, she’ll be able to trace her way back to the wall.
But by the time she comes to the end of the necklace, she has seen no variation in the woods, and no sign of the location of the cottage. She once again unfolds Heath’s maps, and stares at them in confusion. Should she go back or continue on without a trail to retrace?
She turns in a circle, surveying the area. The idea of moving in the wrong direction makes her pulse spike with nervousness. She walks a few more paces, thinking there might be a clearing ahead. Yes—just there, through the thicket . . . she picks up her pace, trying to outrace the fear that lurks just behind her, threatening to break like a wave over her head. But panic begins to seize her chest, and she’s reminded of losing her way in Deluce and stumbling upon the cottage, and then the spinning wheel that transported her here to Sommeil in the first place. She’s suddenly dizzy with the idea that it could happen again, that she may be doomed to fall through one strange version of the world into another and another and another, like a series of marred reflections, until there’s no longer any hope of finding herself.
There is no clearing; it had been a trick of the light.
The worry is a whorl of wind in her ears, a stir of leaves overhead, a shivering. She is a child again—so very afraid of the many things she cannot understand. Of the things she’ll never be able to say.
Aurora grabs on to the bark of a tree, the fear making it hard to breathe. She wants to cry. She wants to be held. She wants to be saved.
But no one is here to save her.
She takes a heaving breath. Isbe, she taps into the side of the tree, in their old language, in her truest language. I can’t do this alone.
Another wind snakes through the branches, rustling the leaves. A twig snaps.
And Aurora knows: she’s not alone.
She blinks into the brush, which stirs again.
A set of eyes emerges, several carriage lengths away. And pointed white-gray ears.
Wolf.
Her heart lurches into her throat. She can’t move. It’s not common, she knows, for wolves to stalk in broad daylight. Then again, if there’s little game, perhaps they too are starving, drawn out of their natural habits by the smell of flesh.
Aurora trembles and backs up slightly. In response, the wolf makes a jerky movement, as though about to leap from the underbrush. She freezes again, trying to recall what to do in the presence of wild predators. But all she can think of is the romance of Ulrica, abandoned as a baby in a wolf’s den, where she was raised for sixteen years before the valiant and dashing Prince Bertram discovered her and made her his wife. Ulrica could never sleep in the luxury of the palace; she would lope into the mountains, howling. One night, the prince followed his love and watched her transform into a wolf in the pale glow of the moon. He cried out in shock; then his love turned on him and sank her fangs into his neck.
Aurora looks at the wolf’s eyes. And then she turns and runs.
Sprinting through the forest, she hears the wolf tracking her, gaining on her. Her pulse is nearly deafening; her breath burns in her chest. The forest is too dense—she can’t dodge the low-hanging branches quickly enough. She swears she can feel the heat of the animal’s breath at her heels now. It’s too late, she’ll never outrun—
She trips over a tree’s roots and flies forward onto her hands and knees, a startled sob of pain bursting from her throat. Quickly she rolls to her side, ready to greet death face-to-face, when a blur of brown dives across the corner of her vision.
A young male deer in its prime.
The hart bounds high through the trees—the most graceful thing she’s ever witnessed.
And then the wolf lunges—
And the deer is struck down.
Aurora scrambles up even as the wolf bends over its writhing prey, so close to her she could almost touch it, can even feel the steam leaking from the deer’s wound.
The beautiful hart struggles, whimpering, kicking its legs as the wolf leans in to the animal, tearing at its belly. There is blood streaking its body, covering the wolf’s mouth messily, reminding her of the vivid lip color the Night Faerie wore. Tears sting Aurora’s face. She runs.
She can’t be sure how long she has been running when, out of nowhere, she reaches the cottage. She bursts inside, panting, then slams the door and falls to the floor to catch her breath.
She made it. She lost the necklace, has no idea how to get back to Blackthorn, and is still deeply shaken from watching the wolf attack the deer, moments before it would have attacked her. But somehow she made it here, to the place where Belcoeur left out tea in anticipation of someone coming—though Aurora, apparently, was not the person the queen had been expecting.
She pushes herself back to her feet again, and finds the room with the table set for tea. She touches the fluffy-looking sugar; an insect scuttles out of the bowl. She shudders and pulls away, knocking over the teacup. Scalding water flies at her, and she sucks in a breath, stumbling backward. She understands now why the palace cooks at home always forbade her from coming near their boiling pots.
Aurora’s also certain, now, that Belcoeur’s tapestries somehow depict—or even control—Sommeil. The way the image of the steam over the teacup had seemed to waver . . . it must have been the queen’s way of making sure the actual tea would remain hot.
But still, who was the tea left for—and why?