“Eliot, I still can’t decide if I can trust you,” I admitted, and he pinched my arm against him. “You haven’t even told me what you’ve done this past year. I want to believe you’re on my side, but something is telling me you’re not.”

He huffed. “Fine. After your…Midnight Forest trial in the season past, I went to get Elowin’s attention at the border of the White Kingdom. I went to try and make amends,” he said. “It’s what Harmony would have wanted.”

I blinked up at him. “You tried to see Elowin?”

“Yes. And he ignored me. The White walls didn’t frostbitten budge. He’s closed off from Winter, truly. Just like Nightflesh said he was.”

That dawned on me, and I yanked my arm away. Eliot spun to face me and when I looked at him, I saw a storm brewing in his green-blue eyes. Zane and Kaley stopped a few paces back, and I studied Eliot as he struggled to keep his irises from turning to liquid seas.

“You’re lying to me right now,” I realized.

“Helen,” Eliot said, taking my shoulders and biting his lips together. “You gave me a task to earn your trust. Let me complete it.”

“Don’t you get it?” I whispered. “Forget the crown, Eliot. No one’s coming to save us here—the Patrol has been captured. The crown doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It does matter! I’m not a frostbit spinbug. I know a desperate plea when I hear one. You asked me to get you that crown, so I’m going to get it.”

I stared, at a loss for words. My reeling thoughts went to Cane and the drum. What if we escaped the Green Kingdom and returned to the factory to find that Cane had held up his end, and I’d come back empty handed? This had been my plan, and I was a stone’s throw away from the second piece of the Triad. Maybe it was crazy to let this opportunity pass.

I rubbed my eyes and glanced to the canopy of the nearest tree, imagining curling up to sleep beneath it. But I knew if I did, I’d end up right back in the Dungeon of Souls and rest wouldn’t find me anyway.

A MIDDLE-ISH INTERRUPTION

A MIDDLE-ISH INTERRUPTION

A spark once dormant now glimmered in Kaley Bell’s chest. The girl with the birdsong voice still could not pinpoint what it was that stirred exactly, waiting to break free. But she knew it was there, ever whirling in her heart; silently tugging her onward so she might follow.

“Leave all you have and follow me.” Since the day she had said yes to that whispered invitation, the Truth had been with her, even in sleep.

Which was why she found it riddlesome that Helen’s sleeps were so agitated.