Claire pulled out the pencil and studied it. Charlotte Sagebrush’s pencil always looked more like a twig than a yellow pencil, but tonight, it looked even more twiglike, with a tiny spot of green that resembled a new leaf. Rubbing her thumb over it, Claire tried to brush the speck off, but it remained. She squinted, and slowly a smile crept across her face. The green spot was, in fact, a tiny sprouting leaf. No matter how many times Claire used it, the pencil would never become a stub. It would always be just the right fit.

“I hope that’s a lucky leaf,” Claire whispered to it. “Because I could use the help.”

The transportation Kleo had arranged for her would leave in just a few minutes. She needed to be far, far away by dawn. Far away from the so-called prince. Far away from an empty Diamond Tree Vault.

Taking a deep breath, she placed the pencil’s point on the diamond and scrawled the first thing that came to mind: Open up.

Nothing happened. The pencil didn’t even leave a mark.

Claiiirrre, Sophie’s voice groaned. Relax.

Shh, Claire mentally shot back, but she felt her shoulders slump. There’d been no hum of magic when she’d moved the pencil. How had she released the echo-sketch before? Claire’s foot tapped nervously. She’d been thinking about the crown and how heavy it might be to wear … a thought she might have shared with a younger Princess Estelle.

Again, she placed the pencil’s tip on the box. But she didn’t move her hand. Instead, she tried to settle into the memory the pencil had shared. Of the weight of the petticoats around Estelle’s ankles. Of the way the crown had winked at her, humming a quiet song.

Claire’s pencil, held by her hand, began to move across the diamond box. This time, instead of sliding off, the tip sank into the diamond, leaving in its wake an orange gleam of molten diamond and an extravagant O. Followed by a swooping P and then the curlicue E, just like the signature at the bottom of her sketch—Estelle’s signature, as she’d realized in Kleo’s old bedroom.

These were not Claire’s own round, straight letters but were flowing, full of flourishes and impossible to mimic: Estelle’s handwriting. Or, as Kleo had referred to it: written in the queen’s hand.

With a final swoop, the pencil scrawled an old-fashioned N. The four letters, all glowing bright orange, burned for a moment on the vault and then slowly sank into diamond. Tiny chimes suddenly filled the air as the diamond branches began to move, unlocking one by one. And then it opened, unfurling like a tulip to reveal a black seed: the Spinners’ Love Knot Tine.

There wasn’t time to admire it. Claire grabbed the quarter of the Crown of Arden—and gasped.