“She came here,” it said through a grotesque replica of Purpose’s mouth. “She gave me what she wa-a-a-anted. Give me that or give me fle-e-esh.”

“I want to go home!”

“Wrong.” It leered, black ooze dripping from the side of its wide maw. “Wro-o-ong little fetus.”

It shuddered, its features shifting, worms roving under its patchy skin.

“Truth or flesh,” growled not-Temperance. She looked heartbreakingly dead, and still so very young. Thankfully, the creature convulsed and morphed again, but when it rose, the form it had taken was the most frightening of all.

“Wha-a-at do you want?” rasped the Western Wilds fighter. Blood leaked down the side of his head and he held half of a broken spear in his desiccated hand. It was a soldier Scratch had killed. She had thought of it as a clean kill, just one stab under the ribs. It didn’t look clean now, the ragged hole gaping from the thing’s midsection, green and infected. “What do you want?”

“To do better!” she shouted, squeezing her eyes shut. It did no good; the image was burned into her eyelids. “To be better.”

“Good,” the thing cried. Around it, the winds shifted, pulling Scratch nearly off her feet. “More.”

“To mean something. Something that actually matters.”

“Yes.” The winds howled, churning up dead leaves and sticks, a vortex of dust and debris. “More.”

“Brella. I want Brella!” The truth of it was a cliff jump, freeing and terrifying. She could feel the wind whistling by her ears as she fell, wincing for the impact. She was honest and terrified, free and dying. Frightened, alone, falling . . .

To want was to see things clearly. All these things she had ignored, the deaths she  justified to herself, the kills she claimed were necessary. The reaching for a command, the title that would change how she was seen, but not what she saw in the mirror—the skinny, hungry, lonely Lakes girl without a friend. Her insistence that she didn’t want love because it would pull her away from her path. The truth, that she didn’t want love because it would force her to see things clearly, force her to know herself. Force her to face the reality that all these things she wanted, she didn’t want at all.

The wind died. Scratch carefully opened her eyes. Where the beast had been now stood a girl of around ten. Her skin was milk white and fresh, her hair in long, blue curls.

“Thank you,” she trilled, and skipped away into the forest.

Scratch stood dumbfounded. Her hands shook. Her mouth was dry and she was impossibly thirsty. She raised her hands to her stomach, her face. She was clothed. She was whole. How? How could that be true when she could have sworn she was naked and rent?

“Well,” said a voice from behind her, “I’d say that was a test well passed.”

Scratch turned around and screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six