“Shadow should not have spoken.”

“It is his child. You are his child.”

“No! She and I are mine. I never signed his paper. He took her from me.”

“I agree, of course. None of you are ever his, and all of you, before long, fight your way to my grove. Or try to. And most become my trees. My grove of child-mothers, audience to nightingales. In the end, you are all mine. In the end, Shadow will be, too. He’ll come after one of you, one day. Or, maybe, after me.”

“He won’t. He can’t.”

“In time.”

“Never. I took his teeth and his eyes. I took his fingertips and his feet. There is no path that he can follow now, no trail he can trace.” Heather spat thick honey, veined in blood, into the moss at her feet.

The dark lady smiled. “Vengeful little sapling. I wonder if you’re even fit for my forest.”

“He took her from me. And so did you. Now give her back, or your grove will burn.” Heather’s eyes heated. The air in front of her ignited in a blaze.

The dark lady retreated, then tossed her head back and laughed. “Of course! Krandall warned me you were different. I should have known. You are Laura’s girl. Or the girl I left for Laura when her girl came to me. You are mine, my dear—you are my daughter, and Shadow’s. I thought you came to give me new growth for my grove, and here you bring me a legacy.” She spun, and darkness extinguished the light in front of Heather’s face.

“Three generations, here in my wood. You were meant to die in your cradle, little changeling, not grow and bear fruit of your own.”

The trees around them creaked and bent, stirring the air with wandering leaves. Estella curled in the fallen blossoms, and lay sleeping at the dark lady’s feet. The tall woman cast the light of her eyes down to the sleeping child. “Let her stay. Please. You stay, too. I do not mean to stir your wrath. It is lonely in my wood, and I have always wanted children.”

Heather swallowed the taste of honey rising in her throat. “What sort of mother would you be to her?”

“More than you were.” The light came up, sharply, into Heather’s eyes.

“More than you were to me?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Where are your other precious nightingales?”

“In the trees. Asleep, in their mothers’ arms. I am not a monster, you know.”

Heather listened to the gentle rattle of loose teeth in her face. “I am.”

“I made you that way.”

“And you can unmake this?” Heather ran her hands over her eyes.

“I would make you bloom, here in my grove.”

“A magnificent few hours.”

Light poured from the dark lady’s eyes and ran down her face, pooling at the hollow of her throat.