He gazed back up at the stars, the breeze blowing his hair a little. I hadn’t realized he hurt so much inside, that he felt so much guilt about serving Bastian and for Emelia’s death. The fire crackled in front of us, all heat and light and comfort. I rested my cheek on Cadan’s shoulder and rubbed his arm soothingly.

“It’ll be okay,” I whispered, and took his hand in both of mine. There was nothing I could do to convince him that what happened to that girl wasn’t his fault, despite what he’d convinced himself. It was up to him to forgive himself.

“Whatever happens tomorrow with Antares, I’ve got your back,” he said. “Hopefully Antares won’t be up for round two with me, but a few decades is a blink of an eye to a creature like her and she’ll know me when she sees me. Who knows, though—it may be different with you here.”

“I swear, I won’t leave without the cure,” I said. “I can’t.”

He sighed, relaxing. “We’d both better get some sleep if we want to be functional in the morning.”

“Yeah,” I agreed and groggily finagled myself out of my sleeping bag burrito and got to my feet. “See you in the morning.”

“Yep,” he replied.

Behind me, I heard him rustle his own sleeping bag as I climbed into the tent to make my nest of blankets. It took a few minutes to get comfortably warm, and it took even longer for me to fall asleep.

I woke the next morning without having dreamed about Will and was so afraid for him that I had trouble finishing my breakfast. An ill spin in my gut matched the horrible thoughts in my mind. I didn’t have cell reception way up here so there was no knowing if something had happened to him. Marcus or Ava had no way of contacting me. All I could do was keep going.

Only a few miles higher than the elevation we’d camped at, it was snowing. The ground was lightly dusted and snowflakes fell slowly, sticking to my eyelashes and to Peewee’s mane. The air grew colder and harder to breathe the whole way we climbed. We stopped for lunch around midday and then were on our way again. At last, Cadan pulled his horse up and dismounted, his boots thudding gently in the snow.

“Is she close?” I asked and slid from the saddle to the ground. I led Peewee by the reins up to where Cadan had stopped.

“From here we go on foot,” he said, and tied Savvy to a tree. “Judah has a map of our route and if we don’t return, he’ll come this way up the mountain and at the very least, find the horses.”

I gave Peewee a good-bye kiss on the nose and a scratch between her ears. I smiled a little to myself when I realized I worried the horses would be left all alone. For a second it felt good not to worry about the dire situation I was soon to walk into.

“You probably won’t want to bring your heavy jacket,” Cadan said almost dismissively.

I gaped at him. “Are you serious? Did you not notice the snow? or the mountain?”

“All right. Your choice.”

“I feel the cold, remember, Superman?” I grumbled.

“What I mean is that the Cardinal Lords make things change,” he said.

“How so?”

A pause. “You’ll see.”

I decided to trust him and leave my coat and wool hat behind. I hopped up and down a couple times to get my heart rate up and blood pumping. “You’d better not make me regret this,” I warned him.

Cadan led me through the narrow path parting the dense thicket, brambles catching on our sleeves and collars, tugging at my hair. I heard the horses nicker and rustle behind us and I prayed they wouldn’t break free and strand us here. The farther we climbed up the mountain, the warmer the air seemed to be. Not summer warm, but like a late october afternoon’s gentle sun on your skin, and I was glad I’d left my jacket behind. The snow was disappearing, melting away more and more up the path until fallen leaves appeared beneath our feet, crunching with each step. I looked up at the trees and the snow had gone from them, too, their bark dry and dark, limbs still full of red and gold leaves. It was as if time had gone backward; the late spring mountain snow had melted away and autumn emerged before our eyes.

The forest opened to a small golden meadow with an enormous tree in its very center. It looked thousands of years old, its trunk easily thirty feet around, and its boughs so massive and heavy that many of them hung twisted and gnarled to the ground. They curled and coiled in every direction, weaving in and around each other, some of them so wide that I could probably have fit my entire body inside them.

“What is going on?” I asked. “Cadan?”

I looked around for him and spotted him stepping up to the giant tree. He drew a knife from his belt and pressed it to his palm, slicing a fine, thin line of red. Then he touched his hand to the trunk and pushed his blood into the bark. He looked up twelve feet or so, where the branches began to unfurl, and he whispered something.

Immediately the great tree gave a shudder, its branches shaking loose golden leaves. The bark began to morph and I had to blink my eyes hard, certain I was losing my mind. Something began to grow right out of the base of the branches. It shimmered in the sun, glossed in the shade, and looked nothing at all like bark. It looked like the top of a head. Human limbs rippled smoothly from the bark, extended along the branches at shoulder height as a torso emerged from the tree’s trunk. The body pulled itself from the tree, arms tugging hard, but vines wrapped tightly around the wrists, refusing to release. Hair fell from the figure’s head, gleaming red-gold locks, and pale gold robes wrapped around the body to form a dress that looked unlike any fashion from the last several thousand years. The face stared at the ground as the body pulled forward to free itself from the tree, the hair spilling over narrow shoulders and dainty arms. Bare feet touched the leaf-covered ground, more vines coiling around delicate ankles as if they were chains binding a prisoner to the tree.