Cordelia wanted her fierce, enraging mother so intensely that she would have howled with pain if she’d only had the strength left. She would have given anything to close her eyes and find herself back inside the protective walls of their stone castle, with no poisonous whispers or hidden truths ever to be uncovered.

Even when Mother’s decisions had been infuriating, Cordelia had always known that she was safe, because Mother was in charge, Mother was all-powerful, and Mother would do anything to protect her family.

Mother was a prisoner now, because of Cordelia.

… And Cordelia might not even be her real daughter.

Was that why Mother had always said there was no point in trying to harness Cordelia’s powers? What kind of magic did Cordelia have, anyway? All four of the children were supposed to have been born with the same magical potential to control the world around them with sorcery … but all Cordelia could ever do was shift her own shape. She’d always been half-animal inside, anyway.

Why didn’t her magic work like Connall’s and the others’? She had always taken that difference for granted, just as she’d taken her jostling, noisy family for granted … until now.

Even without any real training, when Giles had really needed it, he’d been able to use his natural magic to affect the world around him. Mother had always said that Rosalind could do that, too. Cordelia was the only one who’d been deemed untrainable … and not only in the way that her magic worked.

She was the only one Mother hadn’t trusted to know about that tunnel under the moat—because she was the one who had been half-feral from the moment she’d been born. She was the one who’d been constantly tugged beyond the safety of their castle walls by an invisible hook in her chest that never seemed to touch any of the others … as if she’d secretly never belonged inside with them in the first place.

Was that why the land was talking to her now and the others couldn’t hear it? The thought made a shudder ripple through her massive body.

Every time she’d ever flown away to explore, she had known that her family, noisy and loving and aggravating, would be waiting for her when she returned. But now …

“We wouldn’t be here at all if she ever stayed where she was supposed to be.” That was what Giles had said about her that first night, after they’d all been forced to flee.

He’d been right.

Had he and Rosalind even thought they’d had any choice about forgiving her? They still thought she was their sister—the only family they had left.

If they ever found out that she wasn’t …