Chapter 1The Hunt

The branch caught Cressida across the cheek before she could duck.

Pain flared. Blood slid warm down her jaw. She kept running.

Behind her, the sounds were closer now—padded footfalls on damp leaves, the ragged breath of things that weren't quite human. She'd counted three of them at first. Maybe more now. Hard to tell when every shadow in the Thornwood seemed to move with purpose.

Her side burned where the claws had caught her, a shallow gash that soaked her shirt with each stride. The stream had bought her thirty seconds, maybe a minute. Long enough to break line of sight. Not long enough to matter.

*Stupid. You should have stayed on the trail.*

But the trail had led to a dead end, and the dead end had led to a clearing full of wolves that stood on two legs and spoke in voices that scraped like stone.

She'd run. That was all she could remember clearly. Run and keep running.

The forest thickened around her, ancient oaks giving way to twisted silver-barked trees she didn't recognize. Their roots bulged from the earth like veins, and the air smelled of wet stone and something else—something metallic that clung to the back of her throat.

A shape moved between the trunks to her left.

Cressida threw herself right, crashing through a thicket of thorns that tore at her arms. She bit down on a cry and kept moving, lungs screaming, legs burning. The sky was a pale gray smear above the canopy. No sun. No direction. Just trees and shadows and the sound of pursuit.

*They're herding you.*

The thought arrived cold and certain. She'd been running for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and the terrain had only grown stranger. The trees here were older, their bark covered in spiraling carvings that caught the light wrong, shifting when she looked directly at them. Moss hung in curtains from the branches, and the ground beneath her feet had changed from soil to pale roots that pulsed with a faint luminescence.

She should have turned left at the dead oak. Or right at the split trunk. Or—

The ground vanished.

Cressida's foot found nothing but air, and she tumbled forward, rolling down a steep embankment of roots and loose stone. Her shoulder slammed against something solid. Her head cracked against something harder. For a moment, the world dissolved into white stars and ringing silence.

When her vision cleared, she was lying in a hollow.

The glade was small, almost perfectly circular, enclosed by a ring of silver-barked trees whose branches intertwined overhead like clasped hands. At its center stood a weeping willow, impossibly old, its leaves trailing down to brush the ground in curtains of pale green. The air here was still. Too still. No birds. No wind. Just a silence so complete it pressed against her ears.

Cressida pushed herself up, wincing as her shoulder screamed in protest. Her head throbbed. Her side pulsed with a dull, wet heat. She pressed a hand to the wound and felt blood, too much blood, soaking through her fingers.

*Get up. Move. They'll find you.*

But her legs wouldn't cooperate. The exhaustion hit her like a wave, sudden and crushing, and she slumped back against the willow's trunk. The bark was warm against her spine. Almost alive.

Something stirred in the shadows beneath the willow's canopy.

Cressida's hand went to her belt, where the hunting knife she'd bought at a gas station three states ago hung in its sheath. Her fingers closed around the handle.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't you dare."

The shadows coalesced. Took shape. Became a figure—tall, gaunt, dressed in robes that seemed woven from mist and moonlight. His face was ancient and young at once, lined with sorrow, and his eyes held no pupils, only a soft silver glow that reminded her of the carvings on the trees.

"I am what remains," he said.

Cressida's knife was in her hand before she finished blinking. She held it between them, blade steady despite her trembling arm. "Stay back."

The figure did not move. His gaze drifted to the wound on her side, and something like pain flickered across his features. "You carry the echo of Silverwood in your blood. I felt you the moment you crossed the old boundary."

"I don't know what that means."

"You will." He raised a hand, and the air between them shimmered. "But first, you must see what is coming."

Cressida's grip tightened on the knife. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Then I will bring it to you."

The shimmering air expanded, and Cressida felt it—a pressure behind her eyes, a pull in her chest, like the moment before a fall. Images flooded her mind.

A forest, green and thriving, its trees tall and proud. Wolves moved through it, silver-furred and graceful, and she felt their joy like a second heartbeat.

Then rot. Black veins spreading through the bark. The silver wolves fading, their howls turning to silence. Children lying in beds, their skin pale, their breath shallow. A woman standing at their bedside—dark-haired, sharp-eyed, her face carved from grief and determination.

*Elara.*

The name surfaced from somewhere deep in Cressida's mind, though she had never heard it before.

The woman turned, and her gaze met Cressida's across the vision. Her lips moved, forming a single word.

*Heir.*

The vision shattered.

Cressida gasped, her chest heaving, her hands shaking so badly the knife nearly slipped from her grip. "What—how—"

"I showed you the truth." The ghostly figure—Thorn, she realized, though she didn't know how she knew—drifted closer, his feet never touching the ground. "The land is dying. Elara Voss believes she can save it by severing its bond to the Silverwood bloodline and binding it to her own. She has been poisoning the Thornwood for years, hoping to force the lost heir to emerge."

"That's insane." Cressida's voice cracked. "I'm not anyone's heir. I grew up in foster care. I don't have a mother, I don't have a *clan*, I don't—"

"You do." Thorn's voice was gentle, but it cut through her protests like a blade. "Your mother was the last alpha of Silverwood. She hid you among the humans to protect you, knowing that one day you would be needed. That day has come."

Cressida shook her head, backing away until her spine hit the willow's trunk. "No. No, this isn't real. I'm bleeding out in the woods, and I'm hallucinating, and—"

"You dreamed of this place."

The words stopped her cold.

Thorn's silver eyes held hers. "The weeping willow. The still air. You have seen it before, in your sleep, night after night. You never understood why."

Her breath caught. She wanted to deny it. But she couldn't.

Because he was right. The dream had haunted her for as long as she could remember—a forest of silver trees, a willow weeping in the dark, and a voice calling her name in a language she didn't know. She'd thought it was just a nightmare. Just her subconscious, dredging up fears she couldn't name.

But standing here, blood soaking through her shirt, she felt the truth settle into her bones like a key turning in a lock.

*This is real.*

"You are the last of Silverwood," Thorn said, his voice fading, his form growing translucent. "And Elara's hunters are almost here. You must decide, Cressida. Trust what I have shown you, or flee into a world that will never understand what you are."

"Wait." She reached for him, but her hand passed through empty air. "Wait, I don't know what to do—"

"Your blood knows." His smile was sad, achingly sad, and he was already gone, dissolving into the shadows beneath the willow. "Listen to the forest. It has been waiting for you."

She stood alone in the glade, her heart pounding, her wound bleeding, the sounds of pursuit growing louder in the distance. The first shifter broke through the trees—a woman with dark hair and yellow eyes, her lips curled into a snarl.

Cressida's hand found the willow's trunk.

The bark was warm. And beneath her palm, she felt it: a pulse, slow and deep, like the heartbeat of something vast and sleeping.

*Listen to the forest.*

She closed her eyes.

And for the first time in her life, she listened.