Claire stared at her. It was what she wanted for Arden. But how could she believe that Terra—Queen Estelle—wouldn’t just return to her selfish, murderous ways?
After all, Queen Estelle had killed unicorns. She’d ordered Royalists to kidnap Claire. No matter what the queen claimed, her intentions couldn’t be cured.
But Terra …
Terra had been kind to them. Terra had taught Claire magic, had brought her to a diamond-lit sing-along to tell her that she belonged to Stonehaven. And how badly Claire had wanted to believe that! How badly she’d wanted to be the Gemmer princess, heir of Arden.
“I can’t,” was all Claire said. Because that much, at least, she knew. “I already tried and failed. You know that.”
The queen drummed her fingers along the cane. “I have a theory. And I need to test it.”
Theory. There was that word again. The word that reminded her so much of her older sister. Terra was an older sister, too. Prince Martin, Claire’s many-times great-grandfather, had been her little brother. And yet, he thought it was better to turn his sister to stone and steal away to another world where he could keep the moontears safe. She couldn’t imagine anything awful enough that would justify her turning Sophie into stone.
Claire suddenly felt sickened.
Because if Prince Martin had done so, the queen truly must be evil. What person wanted to have an allegiance with the wraiths?
“I can’t,” Claire whispered again. “I’m not Arden’s heir. And besides, the unicorn probably doesn’t even exist.” Sophie’s deceit curled up from her memory like smoke.
“I suggest you give it another try,” Queen Estelle said, her voice hardening, sounding less and less like Scholar Terra and more like that cold voice that echoed eternally through the Petrified Forest.
Claire’s fingers were beginning to sweat. She looked at the queen, dressed in the unicorn artifacts. What was she planning to do?
“You try my patience, Princess,” Estelle warned.
Princess. That’s what Claire had wanted to be so badly at Stonehaven. A princess who could wake the moontears and save Arden. A princess whom Sophie would see as brave and more than just her little sister who needed to be protected from the truth. As more than just the youngest Martinson.
Suddenly, Claire’s heart began to pound.
She was the youngest Martinson, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Sophie was the oldest Martinson in Arden, or that Claire was the only Gemmer princess in Arden.
Someone had to have put the ladder in Windemere’s fireplace. And that someone had died … but what if she hadn’t? What if she had simply found herself in another world?
Claire fought to keep her expression neutral as the queen slowly raised the ram-head cane.
“I’ll do it,” Claire squeaked, pretending to be afraid. She could follow the queen’s command—stall long enough to figure out how to get out of this dangerous situation—and the unicorn would still be safe, no matter what the queen’s new theory was.
Claire brought the flute to her lips. She closed her eyes, and thought of the unicorn that had sprung from the rock on the Sorrowful Plains. Thought of the sheer joy of that moment, the all-encompassing hope, the terrible beauty of its magic unleashed. And the way it charged at Sophie as though knowing where it was needed most—healing at least her arrow wound only to vanish before Claire could even blink.
How she wished it had not vanished. Where had it gone? Please be okay, she thought.
She pressed her lips to the flute, and let her breath come naturally, flowing into the instrument, the hope and pain and fear and confusion all mingling together into that one stream of breath, into that one thought.
No sound came forth.
No majestic beast stormed into the room.
Claire had failed—again. And this time it was for the best. She almost laughed—she never expected to be so glad that she wasn’t a princess! At least the last unicorn, if it was still out there somewhere in Arden, would remain safe for now.
She moved the flute away from her lips.
And that’s when she heard the scream.
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No, not a scream—a screech!
Metallic snakes scraped under the stone door. But that wasn’t right, either. These snakes weren’t sleek and scaly, but fuzzy and fibrous, like the Root Tracker that had tapped Claire. Quicker than a blink, the metal roots—for that’s what they were—writhed up the stone door, crisscrossing over one another, tying knots that Claire knew would never be undone.
Then the roots began to tighten … tighten … tighten—
The door disintegrated in an explosion of dirt and grit. Pebbles rained over her and Claire threw her arms over her head.
“Claire?” Sophie’s voice came from behind a cloud of dust. “Where are you?!”
“Here!” Claire said, coughing as the dust coated her tongue. She let go of the crystal flute, and it hurtled toward the floor. There was a shattering sound, like glass but purer, and Claire had the fleeting thought that it was ironic that the only time she could make it sound was when she broke it. But she didn’t have to be the chosen princess to know what was right.
Though the crystal flute had been meant to be a gift, it had been turned into a curse. No creature should be at the beck and call of another.
As long as the unicorn was out there, Estelle would hunt, and maybe next time, she would figure out who the real heir of Arden was, just as Claire had just done.
Sweeping her hands in front of her, she hit something hard: the pedestal! Quickly, she wrapped her fingers around the moontear necklace and pulled—but something pulled back.
As the cloud of dust settled, Claire saw that Terra, too, had reached for the moontears. And that her hands were clutched around them just as tightly as Claire’s.
“Let go!” Claire shouted, pulling. But the queen stayed still—and how could she have expected otherwise? Queen Estelle had been rock for three hundred years. She knew how to stand her ground.
“In a way,” Queen Estelle said quietly, “I am sorry. There are so few Gemmers left. Stonehaven’s magic has crumbled beyond almost any recognition and my court shall be very empty—for a while, at any rate. But,” she let out a sigh, “why is it that family must always disappoint?”
And with that, she raised Carnelian’s ram cane high.
Claire braced—not knowing what kind of magic a unicorn huntress would unleash—but the blow or spell never came.
Instead, the queen’s gray eyes widened. “I was right!”
Confused, Claire looked over her shoulder as Sophie catapulted herself out from the cloud of dust, Sena and Nett just behind.
“LEAVE HER ALONE!” Sophie screamed. Her white-streaked hair was a tangled mane flying loose behind her, and in her hands was a purple ribbon, the same shade as her usual ponytail ribbon, but longer … much, much longer.
Sophie flicked her wrist, and the ribbon streamed through the air, momentarily looking like a dragon’s tail in flight. Suddenly, there was a gentle hug as the ribbon looped around Claire’s middle, and yanked her from the path of the queen’s cane. Claire lost her grip on the moontears and hit the ground, rolling across the treasure room floor until she reached the far corner.
By the time Claire had caught her breath, the ribbon was again crisscrossing through the air, back toward the queen, more specifically, the queen’s eyes. Sophie was trying to blindfold the queen!
“How dare you!” Estelle shrieked, and the next second the hairband disintegrated into purple dust. While Sophie, Nett, and Sena coughed, Estelle slammed her cane on the floor. And as she did, she let out a bellowing cry. “Wraiths—to me!”
A hum of magic rippled out, like rings in a pond, rushing into Claire and her friends. But Claire couldn’t tell what the queen had done until she looked at her sister. Sophie was running in slow motion, as if her blood were slowly turning to stone.
An image of the Malchains—frozen somewhere on St
arscrape Mountain—flashed through her mind. Queen Estelle’s spectacles could see many things … why shouldn’t they be able to see all the way down to the rest of Stonehaven’s ghost town? Estelle had probably seen Anvil talking to Claire and Sophie, and then, once she’d settled the Martinsons, she must have snuck out of the Citadel and trailed Anvil, tracking him to Aquila and the forest cottage.
No wonder Terra had been late to gather them that first morning at Stonehaven! But, though Sophie, Sena, and Nett were clearly under some great weight, her friends were not frozen completely into rock. Not yet, anyway.
Claire wiggled her fingers and took a step forward. She felt absolutely fine—even if she was terrified.
“Claire,” Sophie whispered urgently, “you have to do something! We’ve all been cursed.”
“How did you get here?” Claire asked, dazed.
“Thorn!” Nett said, as if that were an explanation. He moved even more slowly, as he was helping a limping Sena who bled freely from her arm.
Glancing at the queen, Claire saw Estelle was hunched over the cane, breathing deeply. So, even with all her power and unicorn artifacts, she was weak. But the wraiths would be here at any moment.
Mom always said Claire had a unique way of looking at the world, seeing its details and patterns. That’s what made her such a good artist. There must have been some way to get out of here. Some plan that the queen would have overlooked. She scrambled to a treasure chest and flung it open. But instead of a collection of forgotten magical swords, all she found were silken slippers encrusted with garnets.
“Remember your lessons!” Sophie said, speaking slowly around her heavy tongue. “Courage!”
Claire shook her head, rattled, stressed—none of her lessons had ever really worked. She had never cracked open the moontears. That’s why she and Sophie had gone looking for the unicorn in the first place.
“Lessons,” Estelle scoffed. “She could barely make a Gemglow.”
“Claire!” Sophie yelled, drowning out the queen’s insidious words. “You’re powerful! You made a Grail explode!”
But Claire didn’t know how to explode things on purpose. All she could remember were the droning lectures about minerals in the earth’s crust. Supposedly, they would get to magma later …
An idea sparked.
Estelle seemed to have gathered back her strength, and she raised her cane again to finish the magic that would turn the blood in her friends’ veins to rubies. Claire was out of time. What she knew would have to be enough.
She would have to be enough.
“Get back!” Claire shouted. And as her friends scooted back, Claire lunged toward a rock shelf, polishing the rough worn rock, letting the heat of her anger, her frustration, her shame call to the heat that the rock must have once known—and invited it to join her.
It grew hot—but not hot enough.
Terra strode toward her, illuminated by the unicorn artifacts that decorated her figure. Unicorn artifacts made the magic, Claire knew. They made any craft stronger. They made it more. If only Sophie hadn’t lied to her. If only the unicorn mane in her pocket was real, and not just silver threads from a torn dress. If only—
—Suddenly, Claire was too hot. She lurched back, just in time to see the stone shelves melt like a candle into a pool of lava, separating the children from the queen.
“Impressive,” the queen sneered. “A d’Astora through and through. But I have unicorn artifacts, too.” She stepped forward and tapped the molten puddle with her cane. It immediately began to cool back into rough stone.
But apparently by doing so, she also released Sophie, Sena, and Nett from whatever spell she’d put on them.
“Try again!” Sophie cried, diving toward Claire now that she was able to move freely. “You’ve been learning how to wake the moontears—how to break them open!”
And at her sister’s words, Claire understood what she needed to do. She pressed harder, urging the hum in her hands to go into the rock. She didn’t just need to melt rock. She needed to break the earth open.
But she was tired. If only Sena had a hammer or Nett could call oak roots to tear through the layers of dirt beneath them. She felt her strength draining.
“Come on, Claire.” She suddenly felt Sophie’s hand in hers. “You can do this.”
Squeezing back tightly, Claire lunged for a diamond scepter that had fallen into the softening rock. Diamonds knew heat—pressure—intimately. And as Claire slammed the scepter diamond-first into the ground, image after image tumbled into her mind: The Royalists ordering Sophie’s death on the Sorrowful Plains. The strange, blood-stone trees of the Petrified Forest as they shrieked the queen’s secrets. Sophie thinking Claire needed lies in order to be brave. Sophie’s crumpling face as Claire said I hate you.
Claire’s heart broke all over again.
And the earth split open.
Magma billowed up from the hole, a geyser of lava and hot stone, creating a continuous, roaring wall of molten rock between them. Protecting the Martinson sisters and their friends—but also trapping them in, for the exit was on the other side of the curtain of fiery stone.
“Wraiths—to ME!” they heard Estelle cry.
“Get away!” Claire cried to Sophie, who already had her back up against the far wall.
“We can’t,” Sena snapped. “We’re blocked.”
“And it’s hot!” Nett said, sweat coursing down his face. It could have been the heat—the same kind of heat that made the desert shimmer—but Claire thought she saw the threads of the embroidered dandelion fluff on Nett’s shirt unhook themselves from his tunic and drip down his shirt, almost as if the very thread was melting.
Shaking her head, Claire tried to focus. She was tired. She was spent. But she still had to try.
“Give me a moment,” she said, fighting both heat and exhaustion. She swayed on her feet. If it got any hotter she was going to faint. “I can … I can …” but she couldn’t. She sat down hard, too weak to stand, let alone craft anything else. And looking around at her friends, they were weak and exhausted, too.
“Look,” Sena cried. The protective geyser of lava was no longer red, but turning a mottled gray. It was cooling, and as it cooled—it built a wall of new rock. Rock without cracks. Rock without weakness.
“The wraiths,” Nett murmured. “The temperature always drops around them—the queen is sealing us in!”
And so she was. Claire hadn’t protected them at all. Instead, she’d crafted their own tomb.
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“I can wait,” Queen Estelle called through the rock. “Oh yes, I can outlast you, uni …” But the end of her sentence was garbled. The last of the soft rock had hardened, and silence now encased them.
“What do we do now?” Nett asked. He placed his hand on the walls around them. “There are no plants this deep.”
“Sena, there’s metal here,” Sophie said. “Can you do anything?”
Sena bit her lip. “I can try, but I’ve never been properly trained. Even Claire has had more guild schooling than me. And,” she winced, “my arm.” Her blood was dripping to the floor, splattering the rock.
“I can help with that,” Sophie said. She tore a scrap from the bottom of her tunic. Holding it up, she frowned. “I could have sworn there were embroidered herons on this.”
“Maybe they flew away,” Claire joked weakly, but inside she was far from laughing. The air was stale. She was suddenly very aware of the hundreds of tons of soil that must be above her. Of the squeezing, tightening embrace of the earth. Of the sweat coursing down her cheeks. Though the piece of the treasure chamber she’d cornered them into was large, it wouldn’t have an infinite supply of air.
She staggered to her feet to check the original wall for anything. A hairline crack. A spider’s hole. Ignoring her panic, Claire placed her hand on the wall. It was hard to keep her palm pressed against it. Not because it was too hot or too cold, but because it buzzed. It hummed with an intense
vibration that shook her very bones.
But it didn’t feel like magic.
It didn’t come from her. It didn’t even come from the rock. Instead, it felt like it was coming from something that was inside the rock. The next second, she could make out a great grinding sound, like rusty door hinges or massive gears. She splayed her fingertips out farther.
BOOM!
Claire and the others scrambled back as the walls of the chamber shook.
BOOM!
She had just enough warning to jump back as the original wall cracked.
A gleaming head shoved its way through, followed by a lion’s body and gleaming raccoon’s tail. The chimera shook himself free of rock dust as the woman on his back held on to his copper mane. Woven around the woman’s wrists were multicolored threads, which seemed to exactly match the once beautiful embroidery of Nett’s, Sophie’s, and Claire’s Woven Root tunics.
“There you are!” Mayor Nadia said triumphantly. She dropped her leather reins and leaned toward them, hand outstretched. “Get on!”
“Mayor Nadia? What—how?”
But Claire thought she knew exactly why Nadia was here. Nadia. Who was obsessed with the treasures of all the guilds. Nadia, who had come to Woven Root and decided never to leave. If there was one thing she’d learned in Arden it was this: A rock was never just a rock. A story was never just a tale. And people were always, always more than they first appeared. Terra had been a reminder of that. And so, Claire was about to test out her theory when she heard Sena’s delighted, “Lixoon!”
She bounded toward the lion chimera and before Claire could warn her, threw herself at its copper face. “I missed you!”
The lion chimera opened its massive mouth, and a surprising sound—somewhere between a harmonica’s sigh and a snuffle—came out.
Startled, Claire looked at Nett, whose eyes had widened in surprise. “I think,” he said, “it’s purring.”
Just then, a second chimera’s head poked through, this one not as beautiful as the lion-raccoon but clearly useful as Claire could see a drill had been attached to the chimera snake-scorpion Serpio’s tail. And astride Serpio, as sturdy as an anchor thread, sat Cotton.
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