“Yes.” The word skipped on my lips, so I repeated it with more force. “Yes, I will come with you.”
From Krol—from my father—I sensed only… relief? Not joy, but conviction. The certainty that I would do his bidding, that there was no doubt.
I shuffled forward.
Yes, child. Come with me.
Wails again erupted behind me, but they didn’t matter. I knew what I had to do.
The Gray Wood is only the beginning of your new world. The world that was stolen from you, as you were stolen from me.
He led me onward, deeper into the forest. Along the shadowy path, past gray gnarled trees and withered bushes. Dead leaves and twigs scattered across the woodland floor. We walked so long, I was sure we should have emerged at the banks of the Thames. But the trees only grew denser, darker.
“That night on the Slopes,” I said when I could no longer hold back the question. “The girl who perished. Was that you?”
There was a long pause. I sensed his frustration. Or was it something else?
Your phantom wandered in the Gray Wood that night. I tried to reach you, but you were gone before I could.
My phantom? Had I traveled when I fainted? But what did that have to do with the village girl?
When she appeared, I believed it was you, returning to me. I approached too soon, and the stupid creature made such noise. Such awful cries. She would have ruined our plans. She would have ruined everything.
In his thoughts, I saw him trap her in the tall grasses and drain away her life. I could see her face locked in fear. He wasn’t sorry he’d done it, only annoyed that it had to be done.
If he sensed my horror, he didn’t show it. His thoughts seemed drawn elsewhere.
It’s your power.
Were his words a response to my silent question? I didn’t know, but I remained silent to urge him on.
You have remarkable strength, like your mother.
“What happened to her?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Choices had to be made. I paid the price, but you… you can change everything.
Perhaps I could. But I had to keep my mind blank. Keep his mind’s claws from my thoughts.
I focused on each step as we proceeded in silence until we came to a low hanging branch. He swept it aside, and I could see we’d reached the edge of a meadow. But a meadow unlike any I’d ever seen.
The sky was still wrapped in inky darkness, but each tree, every shrub and flower was imbued with its own glistening, shimmering light. Even the stones and the dirt beneath my feet twinkled with a preternatural glow. Orange, yellow, blue, violet. I saw every color of the rainbow as I gazed across the luminous landscape.
Even my hands and limbs emanated with color.
I have much to show you.
I wanted to see it all. Truly I did. Here, I felt light and limitless. I wanted to explore, but there was something else I wanted more.
“Can you take me to the tree?”
He cocked his head to the side.
Would he feign not to know which one I meant?
How do you know of this tree?
“I’ve seen it in my dreams.”
They were not dreams.
He probed my thoughts, seeking the truth.
I held the image I’d plucked from his own mind.
This stalemate lasted so long I nearly lost my nerve.
Then he nodded. Satisfied. It is close.
He led me back toward the woodland and we walked along the border of tall trees until we came to it. Straddling both the Gray Wood and the shimmering meadow, that ancient oak rose to an astonishing height, just as I’d seen it in my vision. When we reached it, I slumped against its trunk. “Allow me to rest a moment.”
He watched me, wary. Why?
“I’m so tired.” I made a show of heaving my breath.
Only for a moment.
I stared at the ground and nodded, as if it was too much to even hold my head upright. The truth was I was searching for something.
Krol circled me and the tree in a beastly manner that unnerved me. When he was far enough away that he couldn’t stop me, I dropped to a crevice in the bark and touched the thing I sought with my bare hand.
“Fosgail,” I said aloud, praying it was an adequate pronunciation of the command I had plucked from the vision.
It must have been because the bark beneath my fingers slithered apart and the slim crevice widened to a gaping hole. I saw the blur of him rush toward me, but it didn’t matter.
My fingers wrapped around the smooth cold stone before he could reach me. I grabbed it, and its violet light burst through the space between my fingers like rigid shards of glass. I opened my fingers and let it tumble from my grip.
In an instant, my dragonfly flew into its light and it pulsed with vibrant purple hues. Their lights merged and swirled together, and they wound themselves into a shining column that rose to the clouds above.
In a moment, when the light receded, a woman stood before me. She towered over me as she had towered over Queen Boudica, and her silver-white hair flowed behind her, cascading over a lavender gown girded by a silver cord. Pointed ears protruded from that wild mane, and at her neck sat the egg-sized gem, now wrapped in a golden lattice as delicate as a spider’ s web.
This was the Lady of the Fayte.
I dropped to one knee and bowed my head.
She approached and touched my hair.
Rise, Jane.
Like my father’s voice, hers came to me as a thought not a sound.
You have released me from my brother’s curse.
At the mention of him, I looked past her. There was nothing where he had been.
He is gone. For now.
A tug of sadness pulled at my chest.
He is too weak to face me now. But it doesn’t matter. I am free, and I can again pass freely between our worlds.
