Rosalind squared her shoulders and met Cordelia’s gaze, her face still red and glowing from her victory in battle. “What do you need from the two of us?”

“Heart and fierce protection.” Cordelia took a breath. “We have to all agree to the contract. Together.”

And I’ll make the sacrifice to seal it.

She stepped, willingly, toward the triplets she had squabbled with and jostled against all her life.

Her free hand landed on Rosalind’s strong shoulder. Giles’s long, musician’s fingers gripped Cordelia’s shoulder as Rosalind’s free hand landed on his.

“We swear,” Cordelia said, and the others repeated her words as the adult dukes and duchesses squabbled obliviously on the field beneath them, “to love this land and to listen to its needs and to protect it with all of our skills. We three seal ourselves to the land of Corvenne … forever.”

Together, they set the three pieces of the broken crown in place … and inside her head, Cordelia added one more promise that only the land could hear:

It’s all yours now. I’m giving it up for you.

Will you make your own sacrifice for me in return?

A thunderous boom erupted beneath them in deafening answer.

Bright green filled Cordelia’s vision.

Pressure filled her ears until they popped.

Everything was noise. Everything was confusion.

Blinded, deafened, Cordelia gripped Rosalind’s shoulder for dear life. Giles’s grip held her in place.

Behind and around them, a thousand voices sang in chorus:

You are ours.

We are yours.

Forever and ever in endless harmony.

Together.

Unified.

Three in one.

Home!

“Cordy. Cordy! Cordy!” Giles and Rosalind were both shouting at once, their words breaking through the triumphant song of the land.

She blinked hard, swallowing again and again as she tried to break through to reach them—so close but so entirely untouchable. Green stems filled her veins, bursting into joyful blossom. The mountains around her were her steady guardians, anchoring her in place. The—

“Cordy!”

Giles’s face swam into focus before her, and she came back into herself with a jolt.

Tears streamed down his grimy cheeks, but his smile was full of joy. “We did it! Look!”

It seemed to take an eon to relocate herself in her too-small, limited body and to take control of all its different pieces. But once she finally managed to move her chin down …

The Raven Crown glowed in the triplets’ three hands, heavy, silver … and without a single mark along its shining curves to show where it had ever been broken.

Green light surrounded all three of them in a beaming circle underneath a beautifully sunny, cloudless sky.

Leafy birch, ash, and oak trees—vast and whispering—had erupted to march behind them, turning the path down the hillside into a thick, vibrant woodland.

Before them, joyful starflowers covered the grass of what had once been a battlefield. Weapons lay scattered, abandoned, among the bright white blossoms.