“Then make yourself big again!” Evie urged. “Stop him! You’re supposed to protect the forest, right?”
Flinty took a deep breath and made a hollow clicking sound with the back of his throat. Within seconds, a pair of spriggan sentries had materialized on his left and right. He gave them each a short chirp and a solemn nod. They bowed and then reverently removed the tiniest pinch of powder from each of their war satchels. As one, they threw back their heads and swallowed the glittering shards before vanishing again into the tall grasses.
Evie looked back at Flinty. “What about you? Aren’t you going to make yourself giant, too?”
“Cannot.” Flinty’s face was even harder than usual. Evie couldn’t tell if the expression was misery or fury. “Mine is already spent.”
“What do you mean? You’ve got a whole big vial of it right in your hands!”
“Cannot. Must not.” Flinty shook his head wretchedly. “Too much makes us wrong—makes us forget who we are.”
Evie swallowed. “You think Mr. Hill remembers who he is right now?”
Flinty turned a solemn gaze back to the grotesque Jacob Hill and shook his head.
Tinn tried to stand and crumpled at once. Jolts of pain hammered into his leg like nails. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The earth rumbled with every movement of the monstrous Jacob Hill.
“You okay?” groaned a voice beside him.
Tinn opened his eyes. Cole was holding his own chest as he crept closer. His brother’s face looked pale and his movements were stiff.
“I’m good,” Tinn lied. “Just need . . . a minute. You?”
“I’m great,” Cole wheezed. He came to a rest at Tinn’s elbow, breathing in short, shallow gulps.
Tinn let the back of his head sink down against the cold, rocky ground. Fable was gone. The queen was gone. It was just the two of them left on the battlefield. And the monster Hill.
A bellowing roar echoed across the clearing, triumphant, cruel, and cackling. The creature that had once been Jacob Hill returned his attention to the twins. In a single step, he was looming over them, burying the boys in his shadow. He raised a knee to crush them, like insects, beneath one enormous foot.
Tinn held his breath. Cole held his brother’s hand.
Tinn glanced at him, and the two of them tightened their grip. There would be no running. No fighting. There would just be the two of them until the end.
A deafening crash followed . . . but not the crash the twins expected.
The hulking Hill was stumbling backward, and he was suddenly not the only giant on the field. A second massive figure had appeared. This one was earthen and covered in moss, muscular, but not quite as large as Jacob Hill. The spriggan colossus cried out in fury and drove a hard blow into Hill’s chest before the man could properly regain his balance.
Hill swung a wild punch as he stumbled, smacking the mossy giant back a pace just as a second spriggan sprang up beside it, covered in a hide of thick brown bark like wooden armor. One of the wooden giant’s legs moved stiffly, and Tinn squinted up at it to see that its enormous calf appeared to have been set into a splint the same color as the creature’s skin.
“That one’s injured,” Tinn whispered.
Cole breathed in through gritted teeth. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “I think maybe I had something to do with that.”
The two massive spriggans charged toward Hill together, the ground shaking with the force of the ensuing blows. From either side of the clearing, eyes widened as humans and forest folk alike watched the giants slug it out. It was two against one, but Hill was easily ten feet taller than either spriggan, his chest bulging and his arms as thick as tree trunks. Again and again, he brushed off their most brutal attacks. Again and again he drove the towering brawlers to their knees. As powerful as they were, it quickly became clear that even they could not subdue Jacob Hill.
The forest parted ahead of Fable. The soil beneath her feet swelled with each step to support her, propel her, and launch her with royal rage back into the fray.
A crowd of shellycoats and dryads lingering near the forest’s edge gave out startled gasps as the girl rocketed past them and emerged once again on the desolate battleground. A rippling wave of lush moss and green grass spread out in her wake, ferns and flowers sprouting from each footstep—but Fable did not notice the fresh growth. Her eyes were on the monster that loomed ahead.
Jacob Hill—or what was left of Jacob Hill—laughed as a mossy spriggan crumpled under his attacks. The power flowing through him was everything. They had tried to keep this from him—and now they were trying to take it back. But the power was his now, and he would make them pay for interfering. The whole world would bow before him.
“Hey, stupid!”
Hill looked down. The girl did not come up to his knees. His grotesque lips curled back in a smile.
And then Fable clapped, just once.
The result was not a spark so much as a blast of lightning. The crackling explosion sent Hill spinning backward. He landed hard on his chest, draped over the Grandmother Stump. The smell of burnt hair hung in the air.
“Hold him.” Fable’s voice was calm and even.
The spriggans were on Hill in an instant, pinning him down. He struggled, growling like a trapped beast.
The stump beneath him shuddered. All around him, the wood began to grow.
Hill threw an elbow at the mossy giant, who endured the blow and kept a solid hold. They secured Hill in place as Fable and the Wild Wood poured all of their energy into that tree.
The old oak grew. Its trunk rose, pressing into Hill’s chest, tentatively at first, and then wrapping around him like a river pouring up into the sky. Branches sprouted, and the wood creaked and groaned as it expanded.
Hill shouted and shook, but
