Suddenly, the unicorn reared up, shrieking in pain.

Claire didn’t understand, but then she saw a thin red streak across the unicorn’s flank—and heard an obsidian-tipped spear clatter against a wall. She turned her head to see Jasper standing in the doorway.

“Your Majesty!” he yelled, running forward. “The unicorn! Take its heart. Stop your Shadowing!” But before he could utter another word, the diamond hooves slammed back down on the ground, and the unicorn kicked back—connecting with Jasper’s chest. The former commander of Stonehaven flew against the wall and slumped down, knocked unconscious.

But the damage was done.

The unicorn sank to his knees, his glorious horn drifting toward the ground next to Estelle, who still held the ram’s head cane. Estelle’s black hair was now brittle white, her skin so cracked that it reminded Claire of fissures in the desert. She looked all of her more than three hundred years, but her eyes—gray as Dad’s, gray as Claire’s—were the same. And her hands still clutched the ram’s head cane.

“No!” Claire said, terrified. Estelle was going to take the unicorn’s heart! Suddenly, Claire found she could move freely again. She leaped to her feet and reached to grab the cane away, but she was too late. Estelle had already lowered it to the unicorn’s streak of red. The blood no longer glistened, it gleamed. Like rubies.

Claire faltered. Estelle was not trying to harvest the unicorn’s heart for a last chance at immortality. Estelle was trying to heal the unicorn.

But she was fading too fast.

They both were.

The queen and the unicorn looked as though they were eroding away, like rock beneath a waterfall for a millennium—all in five seconds.

“The sun,” Claire thought she heard Estelle whisper into the unicorn’s ear, and with the last of his strength, the unicorn lifted his horn to Estelle’s heart.

Together, he seemed to say.

Wishing stars and wishing hearts can’t be all that different, can they? Sena had once said, not so very long ago. Claire knew, from tales and life, that sometimes a heart could contain a wish so big, it was capable of changing everything.

The chamber was filled with a sudden rush of wind, throwing dirt and dust into the air. Coughing, Claire squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to stumble closer to the unicorn, but she tripped, sprawling onto the floor.

The breeze settled as quickly as it had come.

All was silent.

All was still.

Jasper must have regained consciousness and fled, because he was gone, and it was only Claire and Sophie in the octagonal chamber.

No queen. No unicorn.

Except there, where the last queen and the last unicorn had stood, in the middle of the broken rocks and stones, grew two flowers: a single snowdrop and a morning glory, the first flower that greeted the sun each morning.