And, encircling them both, the Crown of Arden.

Coughing, Sophie staggered over and sat down next to the blossoms. “Claire,” she said, her voice sounding hoarse, “the Spyden was right. Your Spyden and the one in the unicorn’s memory!”

“What do you mean?” Claire asked, coming to sink down beside her sister. She was so tired, she thought she might sleep for the rest of her life. “The Spyden told me only a queen could defeat a queen, and Nadia isn’t here—and she wasn’t crowned!”

Sophie’s fingers skimmed the petals, stark white against the crown’s ebony. “But a queen did defeat a queen. Queen Estelle was defeated by … Queen Estelle.” Her sister looked up, and Claire saw a veil of tears over her eyes. “All this time, all those years, Estelle thought that the only thing that would prevent her from turning completely into a wraith was if she had a new heart. A unicorn’s heart. But all she needed was a change of heart. A moment when she, at last, decided to break her own pattern.”

Bewilderment pressed on Claire, pushing her forehead into a frown and the corners of her mouth down. It seemed impossible, improbable, but Sophie knew things. Still … “She did terrible things,” Claire said fiercely. “She wanted horrible things. That doesn’t erase it.”

“It doesn’t,” Sophie agreed. “And Arden won’t forget. But her story won’t end entirely in shadow.”

“Hmm,” Claire said. She wanted to make sure that whenever a new poem was written about the last queen of Arden, it would contain all the correct details. And she knew just the Spinner she could trust who would take down Claire’s every word. A ray of light tumbled through the stained glass. Sometime during the struggle, dawn had broken.

“We need to go tell—tell everyone,” Sophie said, looking exhausted by the thought.

Claire nodded, but her attention had snagged on something: a bit of gleam in the grit.

“Sophie, look,” she said. The moontears, whole and perfect, lay just a few feet away. With a strangled cheer, Sophie shot to her feet and put the moontears around her neck. But Claire didn’t feel like cheering. Estelle was gone, the moontears retrieved, but something still felt … wrong.

And suddenly, she realized what it was. “Sophie, it’s dawn!” The unicorn’s memory of the Spyden came back to her.

“So?” Sophie asked as Claire scrambled for her Hollow Pack and grabbed the spyglass.

When the last unicorn with crystal horn is extinguished the wraiths will no longer have anything to fear, not even the sun.

Claire hurried to the window and peered out with the spyglass. All across Arden, she could make out pockets of shadows, like billowing smoke. But it was not smoke. Horror gripped Claire in its jaws.

“Estelle’s warning,” Claire croaked out. “ ‘When the last unicorn with crystal horn is gone’—oh, Sophie! It happened.”