Yes. Thierry noticed the crow as well. His brow furrowed. Though he hadn’t spoken his plans aloud, I suspected he’d travel with us as long as we continued north. Toward L’Eau Mélancolique. Toward Chateau le Blanc. Morgane had tortured him and his brother—that much had been clear in his memories—yet Thierry was here. Toulouse wasn’t. But anything can be bought for the right price, he said softly.

“Move, Nicholina,” Coco snapped, joining me at the rope. Nicholina jolted at the words, and we realized our mistake too late. With a vindictive smile, she curled her pointer finger toward her palm.

A single feather fell from the crow’s wing.

“Oh, shit—” Hastily, Coco tried to recoat the ropes, but the sharp scent of magic already punctured the air. The feather touched the forest floor. Alarmed now, I pulled sharply on Nicholina’s wrists, but she smashed her head into my nose, flinging herself backward on top of me. We both crashed to the ground as the feather began to—to change.

“A mouse in a trap,” she hissed. “Who are the mice now?”

The delicate black filaments multiplied, slowly at first, gaining momentum. Melting together into a misshapen lump of clay. From that clay, another bird formed, identical to the one perched in the tree. The latter cawed again, and from the former, a second feather fell. Another bird rose. Three now. All identical. Nicholina cackled.

But the birds hadn’t finished yet. Within the span of five heartbeats, five more had formed. They multiplied faster. Ten now. Twenty. Fifty.

“Stop it.” I crushed her hands in mine—those hands that should’ve been rendered numb, useless—but she twisted away as the birds rose above us in a horrifying black mass. Scores now. Perhaps hundreds. “Reverse the pattern. Do it now.”

“Too late.” Laughing in delight, she bounced on her toes. “Look, huntsman. It’s a murder of crows. They shall peck, peck, peck all your flesh, flesh, flesh.” The plague above us built like a tidal wave preparing to break. “Did you hear me, huntsman? Crows. Murderous ones. Tell me, which shall they eat first: Your eyes or your tongue?”

Then the wave broke.

The birds swooped as one, arrowing toward us with alarming speed. Though I threw up my hands against the onslaught, frantically searching for a pattern, they attacked with single-minded focus. Talons slashed my face, my fingers. Beaks tore into my knuckle. Others drew blood from my ear. Coco tackled Nicholina to the ground, and the two scrabbled in the snow as the crows descended on the others, pecking skin, pulling hair.