And Mother wanted them all to sit locked inside these castle walls for years?

Wings burst open inside Cordelia’s chest as the future closed in around her. Her breath turned into ragged, painful pants. She bent over, gasping for air.

She was trapped. She was caged. She couldn’t breathe! She—

“Cordy?” Rosalind’s voice broke through her spiraling panic. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I have to go!” She lurched out of her seat.

She was a mouse an instant later, racing across the flagstones on all four paws while her unused soup spoon clattered to the floor behind her. The voices of her family shouted after her in protest, but she only ran faster in response. As she reached the end of the hall, one of Connall’s rehumanizing bolts speared through the air toward her—but she darted out of the way just in time. It hit the flagstones beside her vulnerable tail with a fizzle of disappointment.

She wriggled underneath the closed wooden door, through the buttery, and out into the paved courtyard as loud footsteps sounded behind her. She couldn’t stay a moment longer. Not in that room, and not in this big stone trap, either.

Turning cat, she fled across the courtyard, through the archway that led to the kitchen gardens. They lay empty of people and interference and rules, richly scented with growing herbs in the cool, violet air of twilight.

As she leaped through the archway, she changed.

Wings beat hard. She launched herself into the open sky, an insignificant brown bird like dozens of others in the big green forest. No one would notice her, she was sure. No one would care even if they did. But she was free and unchained. She would never allow herself to be trapped …

And as she rose above the castle in swift form, she curved a wide arc through the air to aim herself at those mysterious encampments beyond the smoke-shrouded front walls.

Mother would never willingly share any secrets—so Cordelia would simply find them out herself.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Seen through a swift’s eyes, the world always expanded, exploding with new shades of color. This time, though, all of it had changed—and it looked so wrong that it hurt Cordelia’s stomach.

As she winged over the castle’s high watchtowers, she saw gap after gap ahead where ancient trees had stood for all of her life until now. The first few rows past the moat had all been felled and brutally stripped of the branches and leaves where birds had nested and sung earlier that day.