She was my lone option at this point.

I buckled my leather satchel to the band around my waist and peeked inside the smaller pouch to ensure it housed a bottle of sleep herbs and a strip of cloth. I tucked the Wishtress journal into the satchel, then I tied the laces of my most prized possession—my skates with their wooden guards strapped over the blades—into a metal loop.

Oma returned from gathering berries to find me in the entrance of our small twig hut. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“To break the curse?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” I would have left without a goodbye, but I had to ask one last time to make sure she wasn’t holding back any final information. “Can you tell me anything else about my mother?”

“She’s likely dead by now.”

I let out a disgusted noise and shoved off the tree trunk. “I give up. There is no light in you, Oma. My entire life I kept hoping for a glimmer, but you bring only shadow and hopelessness.”

She threw her bundle of sticks to the ground beside the fire. “Not to the people who buy my wishes.”

My wishes. She still saw them as her own. “They don’t see light. They see greed and opportunity. You and your power-lusting customers are one and the same.” I walked out of the small camp.

“Stop this nonsense, Myrthe.”

I didn’t stop. Not when I heard her following me. Not when her demands turned to shouting as her voice grew more distant. Not even when she begged me to think of the danger I was putting myself in. Then cursed my stubbornness to all eternity.

I never looked back. She couldn’t keep up, even with my limp more pronounced than ever from the stiffness of months in bed. The goodbye was easier than I thought it would be. Perhaps because she’d taught me through example how to turn my heart to stone.

I headed toward the schloss. To the home of the Murder King.

Possibly to my death.

But at least it was forward.

It was a choice all my own—one that might lead to more mistakes, more regrets, more guilt. But I’d carried plenty of that already. I could handle more if I needed to.

A bluster of autumn wind whispered of approaching winter and swirled among my loose hair strands and around my ears. Soothing me. Promising the familiar. If all else failed, I’d always have winter.