A small flutter at my shoulder stopped me. I turned to find my dragonfly perched there, gazing at me with an inscrutable expression.
“Thank you,” I said, though those words had never sounded so inadequate.
Still, I could feel her smile even if I couldn’t see it.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you saved the Queen. Maybe everyone in that room.”
My heart was full to bursting with pride and appreciation, but she wasn’t interested. She wanted me to follow the crimson trail.
“All right. I’m going.” I scanned the garden. I couldn’t see the smoky tendril anymore, but I could feel my dragonfly urging me toward the castle gate. “The Slopes?”
Even as I said the words, a prickly sense of dread clawed along my spine. “I’m going.”
I moved as quickly as I could. At the gate, I heard someone call my name. It was Mr. Bailey. And it was strange beyond belief to see his portly frame lope across the garden’s pathways.
My dragonfly urged me on. She didn’t want him catching up.
“Don’t worry. I know what to do.”
I searched the ground near the door until I spotted it. The rock I used to prop open the door. I grabbed it and held it until we were on the other side. When the gate latched, I wedged the stone into place at the door’s base. I tested it again. It barely budged. I hoped it would at least slow him down.
I turned back to my dragonfly. “Where to now?”
She set off, banked a curve, and headed toward the trees.
“We’re going back to that place?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. I knew that’s where she was taking me. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I muttered as I hurried behind her.
When we reached the grove’s edge, I nearly lost my nerve. My dragonfly must have sensed it because she darted in front of me, urging me to leave the path for the trees.
Reluctantly I did. Perhaps it was my fear, but the grove seemed different. Was my memory skewed? Was this not the place Mrs. Crossey and I had been before? But that tree wasn’t there. That singular tree that had drawn me in.
I trudged deeper searching for something familiar. The temperature dropped and a thin blanket of fog swept across the ground, swallowing my feet and ankles.
That’s when I realized we weren’t alone.
Something was moving farther on. A shadow that slid among the trees. I knew that shadow. Just as I knew those bloody red eyes.
My dragonfly darted through the trees after the shadow creature, and I followed. When we reached a clearing, she slowed.
“Where did he go?” I lifted my hand, offering a perch.
She ignored the gesture and circled around me instead of answering.
It was hardly necessary, though. I could feel him like a burning ember in the midst of all this cold. He was close.
“Who are you?” I called out to the shadows.
Come to me, and you will see.
It was a voice—his voice—but it didn’t come from him. It was part of the forest. It came from the trees and the brambles, from the very air.
“What do you want?” I yelled back.
Come to me.
My dragonfly buzzed the perimeter of the clearing, skirting the darkness. But then she reeled back and flew in a straight line deeper into the grove.
“Wait.” But it was too late. She was gone. I didn’t want to follow, but I knew I must. I left the clearing and entered the shadows.
A dirt path extended in front of me, but when I took a step, I was falling, endlessly falling, until my foot landed on the ground. Was this a dream? The space I’d occupied a moment before was only inches away, but a wall of liquid light now separated me from that spot.
Instinctively I grabbed for the Faytling around my neck, but it was gone. Shattered and abandoned on the Rubens Room floor.
It wouldn’t protect you. A low rumble from the shadows, a figure half hidden behind the trunk of a tree.
I pushed back the fear stealing over me. “What is this place?”
The density of trees, the thick carpet of dead, decaying leaves and twigs, the fog dampening my skirts. It all looked like an ordinary grove, but it was darker. Grayer. Colder.
Despite its strangeness, I knew this place. I had been here before.
Yes, remember. His word trailed off like a whisper in the wind.
Before I could refuse, an image flashed in my mind. A memory. Moonlight pierced the canopy, painting the trees a sharp silver. And he was there, a silhouette beside me. “No!” I grabbed my head, willing the image away. “I’ve never been here.”
Your spirit has come. You remember. It has tried to come home.
Mrs. Crossey had told me he was a trickster, and that’s what he was doing now. “No! That’s a lie.”
They tell you lies. They tell you that you belong to them, but you are mine. You’ve always been mine.
Mine. The talons of that word dug deep, scratching into a past I had never seen.
The beast’s lips stretched into something unmistakably malevolent. You feel it. You know.
“I don’t.” Another flash of recognition hit me. Something vaguely familiar. Like a memory. I was a child.
Do you know me now?
It was coming back. In fragments. “Krol… Your name is Krol.”
His burning red eyes glimmered. You remember.
“How was I here? I don’t understand.” Fear swelled within me.
You already know.
“No!” But even as I said it, my panic mellowed into something new. Another kind of knowing. My arms tingled with strange new awareness. I knew him, but how?
You are mine.
His words burned through me again. Not as a threat but a truth. A revelation. I should have been angry or frightened, but I wasn’t. Only curious.
“How could I? I belong to no one. I never have.”
Laughter like the grinding of rock. You will remember.
“Tell
