“That was my first question—I will not ask it a second time.”

The creature smiled. “Such a clever girl. Well-coached. Shadow must want you to succeed. Does he want the child as well?”

Heather bared her thorns and hissed.

“You get to Estella by following the path, of course. Second question?”

“Where does the path begin?”

“At the bottom of your feet. Last question.”

“What is your name?”

Yellow eyes narrowed. “That is not Shadow’s last question.”

“That is my last question. Answer me.”

“Krandall.”

“Thank you, Krandall.”

“You won’t, before the end.”

Heather crawled around the bleeding creature and sat with her legs dangling into the hole where the flower had vanished.

Krandall curled in the dust behind her. “At dawn, sunlight calls my flower back to bloom, girl. And you’ll be pulp for my roots.”

She turned and stared into the little man’s eyes. “Your flower is out of season.” Heather pushed with her palms and slid into the hole.

***

In black dark, the tunnel threaded through the dirt at worming angles. Heather slid around its curves, felt her skin give way to the relentless grind of stone and dirt till her flesh sang raw.

When she crumpled, landing at the bottom of the pit, she heard her impact echo around her.

The flesh of her mouth hung in ribbons where she’d clenched her jaw in the fall. The raw skin of her thighs glowed with pain as she stood.

Heather stepped backward, toe-to-heel, until her back brushed against the cavern wall.

She pulled a thorn from her mouth and placed it by her heel.

Her fingers brushed small stones from the embankment as she circled the room, counting her paces till her damp thorn on the floor pierced the sole of her foot.

She had passed three openings in her circle of the room.

Ella favored my left side. She rubbed at the scar that swelled along her waist.

Heather entered the passage to her left, leaving another thorn at its entrance. She pulled two teeth from her pocket and slid the long roots into place, where her thorns had been. She felt the loose teeth quake in her mouth as she hurried, soothing her tongue against the smooth enamel.

A steady buzz rattled dust from the cavern walls as she pressed on through the darkness. She wiped mud from her watering eyes.

Daylight punctured the tunnel. Shafts of it shot through the shadows to the floor.

She saw a stirring ahead—the buzzing now loud enough to tickle the hollow of her throat.

An army of mud wasps swarmed through the bars of light—as large as herself—spreading sticky mud over small chambers writhing with larvae.

Heather pressed down on the peeling flakes of the flower’s honey that crumbled from her brow and hung in her eyelashes.