Page 159 of Into the Heartless Wood
Past her shoulder the Gwydden looms. I gasp. She is crowned with antlers and clothed in bones, mounted on a nightmare creature. Her eyes meet mine.
I thought I knew what fear was.
I was wrong.
I jerk backward, stumbling on Luned’s dead arm. My head wheels with terror, and Seren stares at me and stares at me, and I am trapped forever in an evil dream.
The Gwydden’s voice bores into my brain like a steel screw, twisting and twisting. “Did I not make myself clear, little monster? Kill him. KILL HIM!” She waves her hand.
Seren opens her mouth, but no song pours out. Elynion’s spell has silenced her, too. The realization wrenches me, wrecks me. He had no right to steal her voice.
Yet somehow my senses are still assaulted with her magic, silvery, intoxicating, bright. It sinks into me with barbed fingers. I take a step toward her.
“Seren,” I say. “You are not hers. You are not hers.” It’s a question, a plea.
The Gwydden snaps her fingers, and a sword unfolds itself in Seren’s hand. It’s made of bone and birchwood, twisted together and honed to a spear’s edge.
I take another step, and another.
Seren waits for me. The point of her sword trembles.
Her face twists. I realize she’s crying.
And I know—
She is not her mother’s creature.
She does not want this.
The relief, thejoy,makes me ache.
Her magic draws me to her, closer and closer. But the piece of my will that is still mine looses my own sword, readies it against her. Because I know, I know, I know—
If I let her kill me, if I don’t eventryto stop her, she will never forgive herself. She will never think she can be anything but a monster.
I can bear many things.
Not that.
She lunges at me and our swords clash, steel on wood and bone.
I think of the wonder in her eyes when she peered through the telescope. The pulse of her heart as we danced on the hill. Her rough hands, pressed tight over my ears, sheltering me from her sisters’ song. Her mouth on mine. Her body on mine.
She strikes out again and I block her, the force of it reverberating through me. I am weak and wounded. I won’t be able to stand against her very long.
Power pulses off of her, power that is not her own. Her movements are jerky and wild—she’s fighting the Gwydden for control of her body. She slashes with her bone and wood blade. I stumble backward. “You are not hers,” I say. “You belong only to yourself.”
But Elynion’s spell keeps her silent, as the Gwydden’s magic keeps her fighting me.
Her blows come fiercer and faster with every passing moment. I struggle to block them. “Seren. You are not hers.You are not hers.”
Seren’s mouth opens, her jaw works. A voice tears out of her—but it is not her voice. It is her mother’s. “You arewrong,boy. She has never belonged to anyone butme.”
The Gwydden flings out her arm and Seren hurls her sword into the mud. Her face twists. Vines sprout from her fingers, lash out at me. They coil tight around my body, drag me toward her.
Then I’m pressed up against her, close enough to see the tears trembling on her lashes, the helpless horror in her eyes as branches burst from her knuckles and skewer straight through my chest. Sudden, agonizing pain makes my vision go white.
Her mouth is at my ear. Her breath is warm. “She should have killed you the first time she saw you,” hisses the Gwydden’s voice.
