Page 168 of Into the Heartless Wood

nothing.

Chapter Sixty-Three

OWEN

AROAR TEARS OUT OF ME AS SHE SLIDES TO THE GROUND,HERbloody heart in her hand. The rain falls on and on. For a heartbeat she stares up into the sky. Then a horrible stillness steals over her face, and her eyes grow dim.

Too late I am beside her, my knees digging into the mud. I take her hand, thread her fingers through mine. But already she is stiff and cold. Her skin peels up, more like tree bark than I have ever seen it. The violets and leaves in her hair are brittle, dead. Her heart is still cradled in her other hand, rain and blood stirring into the ground.

“Seren. Seren,please.” Ragged sobs wrack my whole body as my own blood leaks from the places she pierced me. I’ve lost too much. I’m lightheaded, weak. She ripped out her heart to free herself from the Gwydden’s will. She ripped out her heart to save me.

I loved her.

And now she’s gone.

She’sgone.

My head wheels. I can’t think, can’t feel.

How can she be gone?

She’s just a body now. Dead in the mud.

I can’t bear it.

I can’t see through my tears.

“Please.” I rub her cold hand, desperate for it to warm, for her to stir. “Seren,please.”

But she just lies there.

Dead

Dead

Dead.

Behind me, the wood burns. Another army has come to join the fight—an army wearing violet and white. Dimly, I know those colors belong to Gwaed, the country across the mountain. I don’t know how or why they’re here. But without them, Tarian would already be lost to the Gwydden’s trees.

Before me, the Gwydden is locked in mortal combat with King Elynion.

I understand now, as I did not before, what it will mean if the king is triumphant, if he kills the Gwydden in the mud. There will be no more check upon his power. No need for him to hide behind his walls and pay a man like my father to read the stars to warn him of his impending death. He will burn the wood to the ground. He will conquer Gwaed, and Saeth too. He will cross the sea when he is done, and all the realms of the world will fall to him. He is no better than the Gwydden. He does not bear the form of a monster—only the heart of one.

I see my father, bloody and dead in his prison cell, his chest riddled with holes from Elynion’s machine. His voice echoes through my mind:There is a way to save her. There is a way to stop all of this. It’s what the stars have been telling us, all this time.

My heart constricts as I stare down at Seren. She deserved so much more than this. Shewasso much more. She tore out her heart to save me, and I refuse to let her die in vain.

You must only give back what he stole, and what she sacrificed.

I shake as I bend to kiss Seren’s forehead, cold and rough against my lips. I weep as I bid her farewell.

But when I pick myself up off the ground and limp the muddy steps to where the Gwydden and the king battle with trees and stars, the tears have gone. My spine is straight. Not even my fingers tremble.

Then her curse will be broken, and all will be as it was.

The Gwydden has beaten the king back, her face and arms seared with angry welts. The stars do not come so easily at his call anymore. He stumbles, falls into the mud.

She hisses as she causes vines to curl up out of the earth, to wrap around his wrists, his waist, his ankles. His face is blanched of color, but he presses his thin lips hard together. He will not grovel before her when she kills him. He will not bend to her anger. He will not admit to his guilt.

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