Page 158 of Into the Heartless Wood
soulless
monster.
I struggle against my mother’s will.
I fail.
I haul him up by his collar.
I set him on his feet.
I cannot even tell him I am sorry.
I cannot even tell him goodbye.
The Eater has stolen my voice.
My mother, everything else.
He will die
thinking
it was always going to end this way.
He will die
thinking
the monster in the wood
never lost her heart
to the boy
who is lost in the stars.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
OWEN
SHE SHINES IN THE RAIN,SMEARED WITH BLOOD,WITH DIRT. FORan instant, a crack of lightning illuminates her clearly. Her green and gold hair is knotted with burrs, the ragged remains of her maid’s uniform still clinging to her body. The violets in her hair have been shredded, the pieces of them that are left plastered to her head. Her silver skin is scored with dark wounds.
She opens her mouth in a soundless scream and shoves me away from her. I fall backward into the dirt, landing on my broken arm. I yelp in pain. There’s a rain-slicked body beside me. Her cap has fallen off, and the singed edges of her hair still smell of smoke: Luned, dead. My throat closes. Four other soldiers lie tumbled on the ground like discarded toys. One of them is Baines. He clings to life, but barely, his breaths coming too shallow, too quick. The trees yanked him down from the horse we were riding, twisted his body with a sickening snap of bones, and flung him aside in their haste to get to me. The others weren’t so lucky; the trees killed them instantly. I am numb with shock, with horror. I don’t understand. They were alive mere moments ago.
Now they’re gone.
The trees didn’t harm me.
The trees brought me to her. To Seren.
I shake as I stare at her, as I drag myself upright again. The remains of Elynion’s army fight the wood mere yards away, but it might as well be a hundred miles. There is no rescue for me. I am at her mercy, and her mercy alone.
But what is she?
There is pain in her eyes. Rage. She trembles with it. But she doesn’t lunge for me. Just stares back, dripping with rain.
“Seren?” I breathe.
