Chapter One ONE
HUNGER DROVE MOST PEOPLE TO the edge of the forest. Bly felt it too, but hers wasn’t the grumble of an empty stomach. Dreams fueled her hunger. They burned in her belly, and sometimes she thought they’d turn her to ash from the inside out if she didn’t at least try to make them a reality.

She stood there often, staring at the spot where the trees grew thick and what lay beyond them rested solely in her imagination. But it was time to see what was really out there.

She tensed at the sound of shoes squishing in the mud behind her. Only one person knew of her plan. She turned and smiled at Elise. Her sister brushed at the sun-blond strands of hair that had escaped her practical braid. A frown pulled at her round cheeks, and her fawn-brown eyes crinkled in the corners with worry.

“I knew you’d come,” Bly said.

Elise bit her lip and glanced back over her shoulder at the village. Smoke curled from every chimney now, rising into the pale sky.

Longing and a little bit of regret filled her sister’s expression. Bly had a feeling that Elise was imagining sitting in front of the fireplace, enjoying a slice of warm bread that she’d baked, sipping mint tea and preparing for a day of work with either their father or mother.

Bly stared at the rows of wooden houses and wished she could feel what her sister did. It’d be easier, but all she saw when she looked at her home was cold that choked the lungs and muddy streets that never dried.

Bly didn’t feel longing until she turned back to the maze of oak and pine trees in front of her. Yes, these woods were dangerous. They lived in one of the human villages in the Gap, caught between the city of Vagaris, ruled by vampires, and the city of Havenwhile, ruled by witches. Vampires and witches didn’t agree on much, but neither would harm a human so long as they remained in the Gap.

The forest honored no such rules.

But Bly wasn’t foolish enough to crave danger. She wanted what you could get if you faced it, and she was brave enough to do it.

Elise didn’t understand that.

How could they be so close, yet so different?

Elise would never follow Bly beyond the woods, and Bly would never stay. They’d both have to break the other’s heart a little to feel whole. But in this moment, Elise was still here for her.

“Will you at least tell me why we’re going foraging?” Elise glanced at Bly’s thick wool pants that had already been patched at the knees multiple times. “Do you need money for clothing? Are you cold? I’m sure we could skip a few meals this week and pay for something new. Let me ask mother.”

Mother never said no to Elise. Her sister rarely asked for anything though. The original cloth of Elise’s skirt ended halfway up her shins. Instead of asking for more clothes, Elise kept stitching new material along the bottom and somehow, she’d managed to make it look beautiful and intentional, like a quilt of woodsy colors. The way Elise took what she had and made it something lovely was a type of magic, but not one that Bly envied.

Bly didn’t want to skip a meal for new, practical clothes.

Bly wanted more. She wanted a full belly and skirts in different colors and ribbons for her hair.

She wanted.

Elise didn’t. She was content. Bly had already listened to her lecture on how they had everything they needed; how this was a risk they didn’t need to take, which was why she hadn’t told Elise exactly why she wanted to forage for food to sell.

She knew her sister would follow her anyway, even without an answer.

Bly moved to take the first step, but Elise grabbed her arm.

“You could sell blood instead. It’s safer.”

Blood was the most valuable thing any human possessed.

The vampires needed it to live, and the witches needed it to cast their spells.

But she shuddered at the thought of getting poked by a needle and watching a red stream leave her body. “I hate blood. You know that.”

“I’ll sell some of mine then.”

“No,” Bly said. She’d already anticipated that Elise would make that offer, but Bly wanted to start her new life right. If she couldn’t be bold enough to wander into the woods for a day, then how would she ever step into them without looking back?

She’d been dreaming of this adventure forever. She and Elise and their friend Emerson had been coming to the woods since they were kids. They’d wander inside but only so deep, making sure they could still see the village, since vampires and witches rarely bothered with people who kept to the edge.

While Elise and Bly climbed the pines, Emerson would stand watch below. Elise always gathered the needles that they could chew on later, but Bly would sit on the highest branch she could and stare out into the trees. There were stories of people who lived far away, past the woods that were caught between Havenwhile and Vagaris, surviving off the land and living better lives than the ones in the Gap. Some people said they built their homes in the trees, hiding from anyone who might hunt them, and Bly loved the idea of living close to the sky with only the branches closing her in.

Then a couple of years ago, she grew too heavy for her favorite branch. It split while she was daydreaming, as if it couldn’t hold the impossible weight of everything she wanted. She’d fallen, banging herself up a little on the way down, but she hadn’t hit the ground.

Emerson caught her.

It was the first moment she saw him differently.

Every dreamer needed someone grounded to catch them if they went too high. Alone, she didn’t think she could do it, but with practical Emerson at her side, she knew they’d make it. They’d do more than that—they’d thrive. Her dreams shifted from half-formed thoughts and whimsical imaginings to something that felt possible. It’d be a simple life, but that was exactly what she wanted. She’d always been envious of the witches with their orchards and fields beyond the walls of Havenwhile. She loved the idea of being able to spend each day working in the dirt with the sun on her neck or climbing apple trees to pick the food she’d eat and share. Emerson would spend his days woodworking, which she knew he loved more than the metalwork he did now. He’d build beautiful tables they’d trade with others who lived near them for clothes as rich in color as the fruit Bly grew. When she came home, only after the sun began to fall, Emerson would be there waiting. He’d brush the dirt from her cheeks and grumble about it, then kiss her anyway. They’d make dinner, and it wouldn’t feel like a chore because the food would have come from her own hands, and she’d have the sunburn on her skin to prove it. That would feel like a home.

The problem was that Emerson never looked at her the way she looked at him. She’d been his friend for too long. But he just needed one moment—like she’d had when he caught her—to make him see her as someone to chase a different future with. And making sure Emerson came with her was the first, most important part of her plan.

So, trembling from a little bit of fear but mostly excitement, Bly stepped out of the mud and into the soft crunch of newly fallen leaves.

She didn’t turn back to see if Elise followed, but she heard her trailing behind as she moved.

They walked straight out for a while, weaving between the trees that hid the sun and let the cold creep in even more. Even a half-hour walk from the edge of town, the forest was completely scavenged: acorns and pine cones collected from the ground, pine needles cleared from the lower branches, bark for teas and medicines stripped from the trees. It would be like that for miles. They had to go deeper.

And they had to choose a direction: head toward Havenwhile or Vagaris.

The basic things anyone could gather in the forest wouldn’t fetch a high enough price. But mushrooms grew in abundance the closer you got to Havenwhile, and berries thrived the closer you got to Vagaris. There was a catch, of course. There always was. The vampires hunted here, snatching humans they’d drink to unconsciousness—maybe you’d wake up or maybe you wouldn’t. And witches put spells on some of their mushrooms, sleeping curses that would let them take blood from people—maybe you’d wake up or maybe you wouldn’t.

Bly turned toward Havenwhile. She wasn’t about to risk a vampire’s bite—she’d much rather have her blood stolen while she was unconscious. But Elise grabbed her arm for the second time, fingers digging in a little too hard. “It’s not too late to go back.”

Bly tugged away from her in answer.

“At least tell me what you need the money for,” Elise said.

Out here with nothing but the trees watching them, the words wanted to leave Bly’s lips. This was a place to whisper about secrets and desires. “I need a fancy dress I saw in the market.”

Elise blinked. “What?” She leaned toward Bly like she hadn’t heard her correctly.

Of course, it sounded foolish unless Bly told Elise everything—how that dress would set off each step of her plan.

“I want to leave,” Bly added. “For good.”

Elise didn’t look surprised. More resigned, like this was a moment she’d already played out in her mind and knew she couldn’t stop. Bly had talked about it since she was old enough to imagine things she couldn’t touch.

Her sister remained silent for a long time. When she spoke again, resolve hardened her face. “Then we need to start cutting back on meals, drying apples to pack, saving up for jerky. You do need warmer clothes. We’ll have to start selling blood—at least some. You’ll never get enough supplies without trading for it, even if you survive the forest.”

Relief flooded Bly’s chest, and just a little bit of hurt. Elise knew her too well to beg her to stay. That made it easier and harder all at once.

“Wait…” Elise paused her list of things Bly’d have to do to leave her forever. “Why do you need a dress? New wool pants to wear under a skirt would be better.”

Bly’s cheeks burned in the cold kiss of the breeze ruffling her curls. “I’m asking Emerson to come with me.”

Elise’s lips parted in surprise. “Our Emerson?”

Bly bristled at our. Of course all three of them were close, but Bly and Emerson had met first, on the edge of this same forest, where Bly had come to wander and Emerson had come to gather sticks to whittle into slender knives. At first she’d just watch him, imagining that he was carving swords and dreaming of battles and heroes, and she filled him into the stories she made up. They always walked the same section, where the oak branches grew out farthest over the empty field. He didn’t notice her until she started following him around, and then she finally worked up the courage to ask him what all his knives were for. He’d said practice. His father was the bladesmith, and he wasn’t old enough to work with him in the forge yet, so he practiced by carving miniature swords and knives. Bly’s stories about him were more entertaining, so Bly told them to him, and he’d laugh at all the silly adventures she made up. He’d laughed more back then—it was a big, bold sound that always caught her by surprise because he looked so serious most of the time.

She’d held onto that original fantasy—Emerson could be the hero in a world that belonged to her.

They were friends for an entire year before Elise joined them, since she was a whole year younger and rarely left the village. Bly would always sneak out in the mornings before her parents could ask her to work, and Elise would stay home baking and cooking. Elise preferred it that way. In the afternoon, she’d even meet Bly where the edges of the houses touched the field to give her a warmed slice of bread and jerky so Bly wouldn’t have to come home for lunch and get dragged with their healer mother to stitch up someone’s injury. Elise loved working with their mother. She had the stomach for it, and she’d told Bly once that healing felt magical. But one day, Emerson came to pick up Bly’s lunch with her, and the next day, Elise had brought a little for him too, and the day after that, Elise packed her own lunch as well and ate with them at the edge of the forest. Bly enjoyed sharing that time with her sister and seeing Elise love a little bit of what she did.

But it also made her jealous to share someone else with Elise, because Elise had their parents in a way that Bly didn’t. Their father was a tanner for the vampires, and Elise also thrived at assisting him as much as she did their mother. Both made Bly nauseous. At dinner, their parents were always arguing about who’d get to take Elise with them for the next day, and whoever didn’t win would look at Bly as if they wished she were another Elise and not a girl who wanted things they couldn’t give. She’d overheard them arguing about what to do with her—how she’d survive. They hoped she’d marry someone with a good job, and then she’d be their problem. She wanted to be someone’s solution, but she couldn’t be that in this world.

“I want him to be my Emerson,” Bly said. “I thought you knew that.” She’d never actually said the words out loud, but surely it was obvious to her sister that she wanted Emerson to be more than a friend, even if Emerson never seemed to notice.

Elise flinched back. She swallowed, looking around the forest as if it had shifted and left her lost.

“I just… Emerson didn’t seem the type to leave. I had no idea he wanted to,” Elise said. She was silent for a moment, looking everywhere but at Bly. When she finally spoke again, her voice was firm. “But I want him to go with you. It’d make me feel better.”

“Well, I haven’t asked him yet,” Bly admitted, hating the worry that immediately crossed Elise’s face at her words. Clearly Elise didn’t think Emerson would go with her.

“That’s why I need the dress,” Bly reminded her. “I need him to see me differently when I ask him.” When she’d seen the sapphire-blue dress in the market yesterday, she couldn’t help but go up to it and run her hands across the silk bodice and the velvet skirts. It was the type of dress that’d get ruined in minutes where she lived, but she hadn’t thought of that. She’d pictured herself wearing it on the balcony of a tree house with her legs dangling off the edge, watching a fire-orange sunset with Emerson at her side. Her dress would be the perfect contrast to the sky. If Emerson saw her in that dress with a matching ribbon holding back the dark brown hair that she usually left wild, he wouldn’t see the little girl with leaves tangled in her hair. He’d see her as she was now. He’d be able to picture the same future.

But Elise didn’t seem to see the possibilities that Bly saw. Her sister just looked sad.

Was Bly’s dream sad? It seemed romantic to dress up before you asked someone to run away with you. She should have known that Elise wouldn’t understand—even in the morning forest that seemed to glisten with lost magic.

“Can we just go?” Bly asked.

Elise looked back the way they came for a long moment before taking a deep breath and nodding.

Bly took another step toward Havenwhile.

“Wait,” Elise said. “Why don’t we go toward Vagaris instead?”

Bly spun back around. “I’d rather take a nap than get bit.”

“The vampires aren’t all bad,” Elise said, staring down at her fingers. “I’ve worked in Vagaris with father for a while now. They usually send the worst ones to the village to deal with the humans to make us think they’re all horrible—to make us afraid. A lot of them in the city are… nice.”

Bly shook her head. “Don’t let Emerson hear you say that.”

Emerson’s older sister foraged in these woods once, and she never came back. They found her body tangled in the berry bushes, clothes stained red from the crushed fruit and neck stained red from the blood. Emerson had been twelve. He’d rarely laughed after that. Sometimes Bly felt like she was searching for the boy he used to be. She doubted she’d ever find him again while they still lived in the Gap.

“I just mean that maybe we’ll run into one I know,” Elise said. “They’d probably just let us go.”

“You sound like you think they’re your friends.”

Elise shook her head but she didn’t meet Bly’s eyes, and Bly couldn’t tell if she was denying being friends with them or protesting Bly’s hatred of them, but finally she sighed, walking past Bly in the direction of Havenwhile. She paused once, though, to look over her shoulder in the direction of the vampires.

But vampires were a more familiar danger to Elise—people always chose the fear they knew over the one they had yet to face. That was all.

The forest grew denser as they walked in silence, until eventually the trees started to thin again, and bright white glistened ahead.

“Snow?” Elise paused and squinted.

“No.” Bly grinned and sped up, ignoring the worry on her sister’s face.

Elise caught her just at the edge of the small clearing where grass grew wild around moss-covered stones and white mushrooms sprouted everywhere.

“Beautiful,” Bly breathed at the same time Elise whispered, “Poisonous.”

Bly laughed. “Beautiful things should be.”

Elise looked nauseous, but Bly bent down and found them two long sticks. “It’s totally safe if we’re careful.” Everyone knew the undersides would have faint blue lines that indicated a spell hidden in them if the witches had cursed them. They just needed to flip the mushroom over with the stick first and make sure there were no marks. If not, they were fine to touch.

Bly poked one, revealing the clean belly. Elise took a sharp breath as Bly’s fingers closed around the velvet-soft mushroom. Bly grinned up at her, running her fingers over it. It felt like touching clouds. Almost magical. She dropped it in the sack at her waist.

Elise stood watching for a while, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other until Bly turned around. “I’m not cursed yet,” she said. “It’d go faster if you helped.”

Elise bit her lip, but she bent down and used her stick to flip a mushroom, staring at it forever before pulling up the front of her skirt and plopping it there.

With both of them collecting, perhaps Bly could get enough for the dress and some supplies.

It wasn’t long before Bly’s bag stretched with enough to buy what she wanted. She was about to turn and tell Elise they should head home when she heard the soft thud.

Bly’s heart gave one matching thud before it seemed to stall out. It must have kept beating. She was still breathing, but she couldn’t feel it anymore.

“Elise?” she whispered.

Silence answered, and then her own foolish heart roared back, racing too fast, thrumming too loud in her ears, knowing already what she didn’t want to see.

She turned, somehow moving too quickly and too slowly all at once.

Elise lay on her side, golden blond hair fanned across the ground, brown eyes open and vacant. Sleeping didn’t look like that.

How could eyes empty so quickly?

Bly dropped to her knees beside her, reaching to knock free the mushroom still clutched in Elise’s hand. She barely caught herself. Her fingers shook so badly that it took her several tries to push it free with her stick.

The faintest blue streak ran along the stem. Easy to miss.

Bly shook Elise.

She was warm. It’d be okay. She could drag Elise away, hide before the witches found them, and wait out the sleeping curse.

It was only a sleeping curse. Only a sleeping curse. Just sleeping. But each time she told herself, it felt more like a lie.

Sleeping didn’t look like that.

Bly poked the mushroom again, and then she saw it: the tiny pinpoint of brown that marred the smooth white top of it. She crushed it, the flesh crumbling easily to reveal a tiny nightshade thorn. Her throat closed at the sight of it. She knew the spell such a thorn could hold. It was a death curse hidden inside the sleeping-spelled mushroom. She hadn’t considered the need to be afraid of a trap within a trap. Her stomach twisted at the evilness of whatever witch had done such a thing.

And then black veins began to crawl from Elise’s fingertips, webbing upward and across her cheek almost instantly, the sign of a death curse. But how long did Elise have? A year? A week? Only moments? Every death curse was different, and Bly clung to the fraying shreds of her hope until Elise’s lips turned a startling shade of blue, and the sound of voices forced her to look up.

She couldn’t see them yet, but the witches were coming.

She leaned close to Elise’s lips, holding her own breath as if denying herself could make her sister breathe again.

Nothing.

Laughter sounded closer in the woods.

It was so light and cheerful, and hearing it while she stared at her sister’s empty eyes made her want to cover her ears and scream and never stop, but she didn’t have time.

The witches were coming. People always said they knew somehow when a human had touched one of their curses.

Bly pushed Elise from her side to her back so she could try to grip her under her arms. Elise’s head flopped, cheek squishing more mushrooms, and a sob tore from Bly’s throat at the lifelessness of the movement. Wrapping her arms under her sister’s, she dragged her a few feet and then a few more. But even though Bly was taller and older, Elise had always been stronger, with hard muscles under her full curves.

There was nowhere to go.

The voices grew louder.

Nothing existed in Elise’s still-open eyes.

Dead. The word filled up every inch of Bly’s thoughts.

Elise was dead.

Bly might be too if she didn’t give up her sister’s body.

Elise would want her to run. A body was just a body, she’d say, not a person to be saved.

Bly gently laid her sister back on the ground. She pressed her fingers against Elise’s eyelids, soft like the mushrooms that killed her, and closed them. She didn’t want the witches to see the color of her sister’s eyes. They didn’t deserve to.

Elise would’ve yelled at her for that if she could. So impractical.

Bly ran until the trees thickened. She should’ve kept going, but instead she pulled herself into the branches of a black oak, the kind she’d dreamed of living in, and hid in its dense foliage.

The witches wore a combination of soft browns and greens that blended in with the forest, so Bly didn’t even see them until they stepped into the clearing. Greenery clung to their hair in wild crowns, and they walked with a slowness that made them seem like ancient trees made human for only a moment.

There were three of them. Their eyes flashed as they glanced around. Bly had always liked the deep blue pool of a witch’s eyes, but now the color seemed garish.

They moved with fluid steps that somehow never broke a mushroom until two of them lay a burlap stretcher next to Elise, and the other bent down and pressed fingers to her throat. They rolled Elise onto the stretcher. One of them pointed at the drag marks on the ground, and they all glanced around again.

Take me too, Bly thought, but she didn’t say it.

That would be the easy way out.

They didn’t bother looking for her anyway, but as they picked up the stretcher and melted back into the trees, Bly felt the most important part of her go with them. The part that hoped.

She clung to the tree for hours, blinking again and again and looking at the spot where Elise had fallen as if time would make her reappear.

The air heated slightly in the afternoon and cooled again, and still she clung there, legs numb from the branch digging into her thighs. For the first time in her life, her mind was painfully blank: no dreams, no plans. Until her thoughts came back and caught on the moment of her sister falling. Then they spun into every second leading up to it—all the chances Elise had given her to stop. To go back. Every moment that could have changed what had happened.

Her throat burned.

The sky turned a horrible bluish black. She used to love the color of the time between day and night, but now it reminded her of the quick spread of poison under Elise’s skin.

The steady crunch of leaves distracted her. Maybe they’d come back for her body too. She felt dead enough.

“Bly?”

Hearing her name jarred her. How could they know it?

“Bly?”

This time she recognized the voice through her haze.

His voice made everything feel a thousand times better and a thousand times worse.

Emerson.

She tried to move out of the tree and fell. She hit something hard, but not the ground. He’d caught her, just like he had when they were younger, but she didn’t deserve to be saved anymore. She pushed away from him so violently that he dropped her. The ground hurt. The pain made her feel better.

She looked up into a face that felt like home: dark brown skin with darker brown eyes, always furrowed brows, full lips that pressed together when he was thinking—and he was always puzzling something through.

Even now.

Emerson yanked her to her feet.

“Bly? Bly?” He wouldn’t stop saying her name as a question as he ran his hands across her face. Finally, he paused. “Where’s Elise?” His eyes left her and roved over the darkening forest. “She left me a note. I came as soon as I found it. How could you two be so foolish?” His eyes came back to her face and darted away again. “Where’s Elise? Bly?”

She saw the moment he knew—that slow breaking apart of one reality as another awful one takes hold.

He looked the way she’d felt when she’d turned around and saw her sister motionless on the ground.

Somehow, it felt even worse seeing the expression on him.

Emerson’s lips moved again, but she couldn’t hear a thing. His hands wrapped around her arms, but she couldn’t feel that either. Her head wobbled, and she was vaguely aware that he was shaking her.

Eventually he let go of her and moved away to the spot she couldn’t pull her eyes from. She watched him pace back and forth, hands running over and over again across the dark brown curls he kept cropped close to his head.

She had to look away. She used to love the way he’d run his hands over his hair while he was thinking. It usually made her want to grab them and put them in her own hair while she kissed him, but she’d only ever thought about it and never actually did it. And looking at him now, that desire was already gone, stripped away from her the instant she’d heard that thud.

Her chest ached with the realization of everything she’d lost; not just Elise but herself too. She already felt like a person who didn’t know what dreams were, who went to sleep at night and saw only the dark, who moved through each day thinking only of surviving the moment they were in.

It terrified her.

And then guilt swallowed her terror. Even now, she was worried about her own dreams while Elise’s had been stolen from her because of Bly. What had Elise really wanted for her life? Bly had never asked her, just assumed that Elise was satisfied because she always wore a soft smile on her face no matter what she was doing.

Bly was a terrible sister, and not just for bringing Elise to the forest, but for all the times she’d never turned to Elise and asked her what she dreamed of.

She sat down and curled her legs up to her chest, making herself as small as she felt.

She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the horror on her parents’ faces when she told them, and then underneath it, she’d see their regret—that it was Elise who was dead and not Bly. She felt the same, but she didn’t want to see it reflected back at her.

Eventually Emerson came back, and he stared down at her for so long that she dropped her head onto her arms so she wouldn’t have to look at him and all the pain on his face. Unforgivable pain.

She felt deep inside that he would leave her, but he didn’t. Not yet. He scooped her up and carried her home. The dark had swallowed everything by the time they got to her house where her parents were surely wondering where Elise had been all day—their daughter who never wandered.

Emerson didn’t speak when he finally did leave her at the door, and the only good thing was that the dark didn’t let her see his face.

In the morning, Bly realized she still had the bag of mushrooms Elise had paid for with her life. She took them to the market. She didn’t buy the dress, but she did buy the blue ribbon that matched it, and she wrapped it around her wrist tight enough to make her eyes sting.

Then she started planning, but not for the dreams she’d had before.

Those had died with her sister.