The race of her heart dimmed. She dropped her chin. Hopeful as she was, the girl wasn’t a fool. She knew the only thing saving the boy’s neck was that he was a boy. Should he be a man, he’d lose his head. He had fought against her people; he hated them.

Like the serpent from the story hated the birds in the trees for their freedom in the skies.

She didn’t care. A feeling, deep in her bones, drew her to the boy. She’d hoped he might be drawn to her too.

Hope failed. While he was young, he’d always be marked as an enemy. Banished and forbidden.

She blinked and reached once more into the fur-lined pouch. “I know this is important to your folk. Thought maybe you’d want to see it once more.”

The girl cupped the gold talisman, shaped like a thin disk, with care. It was weathered and aged and delicate. A faint hum of strange remnants of magic lived in the gritty edges. If her father ever learned she’d snatched the piece from the lockbox, he’d probably keep her locked in her room for a week.

Overhead, the moonlight gleamed over the strange rune in the center of the coin. The boy in the shadows let out a gasp. She didn’t think he’d meant to do it.

For the first time since she’d started reading to him, the boy climbed up the stone wall and curled his hands around the bars. The red in his eyes deepened like blood. His smile was different. Wide enough she could see the slight point to his side tooth, almost like the fang of a wolf, only not as long.

This smile sent a shiver up her arms.

“Will you do something for me, Songbird?”

“What?”

The boy nodded at the disk. “That was a gift from my father. Watch over it for me, will you? I’ll come back to get it one day, and you can tell me more stories. Promise?”

The girl ignored the wave of gooseflesh up her arms and whispered, “Promise.”

When the sound of heavy boots scraped over the dirt nearby, the girl gave one final look at the boy in the darkness. He held up the silver bird charm and grinned that wolfish grin once more before she sprinted into the grass.

The speed of her pulse ached as she hurried back to the longhouse. Her gaze was locked on the disk in her hands; she never saw the root bursting from the soil. The thick arch snagged hold of her toe and sprawled the girl facedown in the soil.

She coughed and scrambled back to her knees. When she looked down, her insides twisted up like knotted ropes.

“Oh, no.”