Claire’s stomach churned. “Take it all,” she croaked out. Raising a hand to her head, she checked her own single braid and shuddered. It, too, was sticky, and she knew it would be a long, long time before she was sure she was web-free.

“Oh my words!” The girl clasped her hands over her heart. “Thank you! Thank you! Tha—!” She stopped pulling the web on Claire’s shoulder. “I’m sorry; I don’t even know your name!”

“It’s Elaina,” Claire said, sharing her middle name. In times like these, better to be safe than sorry, even if the girl in front of her seemed as harmless as a puppy. “Who are you?”

“Lyric,” the girl said, sticking out her hand to shake before noticing a bit of web still stuck to her palm. “Blech, this stuff is gross, isn’t it?” She waved her hand, and the silk undulated like a worm.

Claire’s stomach flipped. “What happened to you, Lyric? How long were you trapped?”

Lyric pursed her lips and looked up at the night sky. “Judging by the constellations, either exactly a year or just since this afternoon,” she said at last. “I’m guessing this afternoon. I don’t think I would have been very … fresh if it had been a whole year I was wrapped up. You know what I mean?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe it was only yesterday that I ruined my entire future!”

Claire sat back on her ankles, bemused. Lyric couldn’t seem to sit still. Even when the girl spoke, her hands moved faster than her lips, each word accented by its own hand flourish.

“Ruined?” Claire asked politely, recognizing Lyric’s pause as an invitation to pry. It was a tactic Sophie used when she was trying to get her parents’ attention: say something big and dramatic and wait for people to ask more.

“I completely knotted my audition yesterday,” Lyric continued, “and now I’ll never be sent to court!”

“Audition? Court?” Claire repeated. When Claire first arrived in Arden, every other word from her friends’ mouths had sounded alien and strange. But she’d been in Arden for nearly three months now, and it had been a while since she’d felt so discombobulated. “Aren’t you a bit small to go on trial? How old are you?”

“I’m eight and three-quarters,” Lyric said indignantly, lifting her chin up to be half an inch taller. “And not court as in trial but court as in royal court. You know, Queen Estelle’s new court.”

…

…

…

Claire’s heart stopped. Her lungs did, too. And though she could still hear the rush of the ocean and the rasp of the pebbles shifting beneath Lyric, her ears couldn’t have been working. Because what Lyric had just said, well, no one knew Queen Estelle had returned. No one except for Claire, Sophie, their friends, Woven Root, and the—