One of the wyrms was smaller than the others. It lagged behind, its movements jerky rather than fluid. Frowning, Willow stepped closer. The wyrm trembled in the grass, and Willow’s breath caught. It was hurt.
She knelt and whispered, “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”
The duskwyrm lifted its head. Its opalescent eyes locked with hers. She felt its plea, aching and raw.
“You’re in pain,” she murmured. She extended her hand to touch it—and an intake of breath pulled her backward as if jerked by a string.
“And your sisters?” Amira said sharply.
Amira wanted Willow to see the duskwyrms... but she didn’t want Willow helping the duskwyrms? Before Willow could follow the thought, the moss beneath her shriveled, the trees faded and fell. The wounded duskwyrm dissolved into mist.
“What of your sisters?” Amira asked again.
The scene shifted. Willow was in the backyard of her childhood home. Thick summer air clung to her skin, and fireflies blinked in the dusky sky. She was sitting across from Juniper, back on the picnic blanket, a smear of egg mucus shining on her sister’s chin.
“Juniper, you just changed the fabric of reality!” she exclaimed.
Ash spun on her heel, tossing her words over her shoulder. “Yeah, sure. By giving yourself salmonella.”
Juniper stared at Willow, wide-eyed. “Am I magic now?”
“Not quite. It doesn’t work like that,” Willow said.
Juniper frowned.
“But your eyes have been opened, and that’s really good, Juniper. Now, when magic quickens around you—and it will—you’ll see it for what it is.”
Juniper’s eyes locked with Willow’s, just as the duskwyrm’s had. In Juniper’s pupils, Willow saw reflections of herself. At seventeen, earnest and hopeful. At eighteen, broken, scrambling out of the Pattersons’ hot tub while Mr. Chapman called out for her to wait. Next Willow saw herself as a middle-aged woman with gentle laugh lines. In the final ring of Juniper’s swirling eyes, Willow saw herself as an old woman, stooped and gray.
A breath curled from Juniper’s mouth, and in the vapor, a castle with onion domes rose against the sky. Willow, dressed in royal garb, stood in front of the castle as a stranger kissed her hand.
“Can I tell Ash?” Juniper asked, her words coming to Willow from somewhere far away.
“No!” an unseen Willow said quickly. “Don’t tell Ash. Don’tevertell Ash. The things you see, she won’t understand.”
Then Willow was back with Juniper, sitting on the picnic blanket in the setting sun. Beneath Juniper’s T-shirt, something bloomed. A heart—not an anatomically accurate heart but a simple childlike sketch of a heart—cracked open like an eggshell. From within, a tiny downy chick emerged, blinking at the world.
It stretched its fragile wings, lifted its head, and flew.
“And for the record,” the Willow on the picnic blanket added, “you didn’t swallow a dead baby bird. You swallowed the promise of a bird. One day, Juniper, that promise will take flight within you.”
Only the bird wasn’t a bird but a dragon—and the dragon became Willow’s sister, Ash.
Ash stood on a brightly lit stage, shaking hands with their high school principal. Gold honor cords draped over her shoulders, medals glinting like scales beneath the stage lights.
Then at twenty, working alone in a lab. Swirling science into secrets in glass test tubes. Willow tried to call out to her, but her voice was locked up tight.
Now Ash was twenty-two, hunched over a desk in a dimly lit university library. Stacks of books crowded her in.How to Ace the GRE. Top-Ranked Graduate Schools (and How to Get In!).And, baffling, a leather-bound book titled,Dragons, Darwin, and Doom: The Disquieting Link between DNA and Devolution.
Willow’s heart squeezed. Ash, studying dragons?
She reached for Ash, and the vision shifted once again.
From high above, she saw Juniper sprawled across her bed, bare feet crossed at the ankles, a cordless phone pressed to her ear. From the other end of the line, Willow heard her own voice buzzing through the static.
“Cole thinks he’s the expert on everything,” the Willow-on-the-phone was saying. “But he’s got it all wrong. And the sisters—Ruby and Brooxie—they only let me stay in their guest room so they can keep tabs on me.”
“You’re living in Lost Souls now?” Juniper asked, her brow creased with concern.
