Sadie had been up since dawn, washing dishes in the kitchen to keep her mind occupied. When there was nothing more to wash, she took her crystal sword and stepped out into the sunlight. Ten AM. They'd been gone four hours now and even though Tisper had texted her a sufficient "we're ok. on our way", her nerves were in her throat and she couldn't settle them back down. She wouldn't, not until she saw them return safely with her own two eyes.

She sat on the steps, the sword bared in her lap—the baby-blue celestite, shimmering like a whole second universe in the sun. It looked like the ocean to Sadie. Like shivers of pale scales, white at all of the rough-edged gables, but a deep blue where there were gaps in the spiderweb.

And then for a moment, Sadie saw something else.

A shape, turning and twisting like a little flare beneath the husk of the stone. It changed shape and molded into something new, moving like a sheet in the wind. And for a moment, she thought she saw dark sockets form for eyes.

No—she definitely saw eyes. They peered into her now, narrowing, glaring right through her. And then there was a mouth—a thin, tight line at first. But it too swelled into something large and dark, and from it came a piercing scream. Not a human scream, not a cry of terror, but a high pitch whine, like a sudden case of tinnitus wailing from ear to ear. She shut her eyes and cupped her head, that sound putting pins in her skull. And then suddenly, it stopped.

Sadie opened her eyes to the sight of Matt's wrangler, kicking up dry dirt and dust as it rolled through the broken gate. She wasn't sure what she'd seen in the stone, but she set it aside, wrapped it in its cloth, and ran to meet Tisper as she hopped out from the back of the Jeep.

Sadie threw her arms around the lanky girl and squeezed. "I'm so glad you guys are okay." And then she puttered over to Matt, nearly ripping him from the car before he'd set the emergency brake.

"I was afraid I wouldn't see this stupid face again," she said, pressing an audible kiss to his cheek.

Matt grimaced and wiped at the lipstick stain. "I'm not the one you shoulda been worried about."

Jaylin dropped out from the passenger side, but something about the look he wore made Sadie stop, feet short of a hug. He acknowledged her with his eyes, but they were stained and tired, and they abandoned her all too quickly.

"I'm going to check on Quentin," he said, and parted from them all to escape into the Watch.

"What's wrong with him?" Sadie asked.

Tisper swung an arm around her shoulder. "He just needs a minute. It was rougher than we expected. Has Nicon come back yet?"

"I thought he was with you guys," Sadie said.

"He's probably halfway to Oregon by now." Bailey slumped down from the Wrangler and stepped to Matt's side to take the gun from his back pocket. He tilted the weapon in the sunlight, then sheathed it back into the denim. "Make sure you hide that," he said and gave the gun on Matt's backside a smack that made the country boy jolt up straight.

Sadie watched the hound climb into the Watch, then she turned back to the others. "What does he mean 'halfway to Oregon?'"

"Nicon was leadin' the hunters away," Matt explained. "Far, far away, by the looks of it."

Tisper turned her by the shoulders to the old wooden Watch house and tossed a deep breath to the wind. "Like I said, it was rough."

They gathered around the table that night, plenty of wine on hand.

"Maine?" asked Imani, stirring her glass between her fingers. "Why would Ziya be in Maine?"

"Because no one would expect her to be in Maine," grumbled Leo.

Acadia set her beer down with a hearty thud. "So let's go," she roared. "Let's tear her out by that pretty hair of hers."

"You can't," Matt reminded them all. It was only the alphas and the four of them. Matt, Sadie, Tisper and Alex. Jaylin had fallen asleep on the bed beside Quentin and no one had bothered to wake him since. Matt shook his beer bottle, watching the last little bit of amber splash around in the bottom. "Y'all are useless against Ziya."

The slight launched Acadia from her chair. She nearly crawled over the table like a spider to reach him. "Say that again, you little cretin!"

Leo heaved her back around the waist, but by then, Matt was already slouched deep in his seat, his arms shielding his face. "We just talked about this!"

"He's right," said Imani. "But I don't see how sending in humans would serve us well."

"Well, she can't control us like puppets," Tisper said, sloshing around her fourth glass of wine. "We just gotta find a way to kill the bitch. You know... the gallows and the turtle and all that shit."

"Maybe we should take away the wine," Sadie suggested.

Tisper flopped her a frown and turned away in her chair to sip her wine in guarded territory.

"Wait, say it again," said Leo. "About that turtle"

Sadie recited the line from memory, "'A tortoise who favors the wicked gallows will one day lose her shell to the throwing stones'. Yui says it's about corruption."

"Gallows," scoffed Acadia. "If ever a woman could love a den of death, it would be Ziya."

"But what of the shell?" asked Imani. "What could that mean? To lose her shell."

Alex rested his cheek in his palm. "What protects Ziya more than anything? That would be her shell, right?"

"I'd say'r wolves," grunted Leo. "Those stupid bastards would take honor over oxygen."

Tisper slammed her empty wine glass down and the sound pulled every face at the table. Tisper didn't acknowledge them, but reached across for a bottle, tore the cork off with her teeth and dumped herself a fifth glass. "Wolves aren't even all her protection."

"And you would know what Ziya's shell is?" asked Imani.

"Duhh," Tisper said with a soft belch at the end. She leaned over her glass of wine and gave Imani a deep, stern gaze. And softly, Tisper whispered, "Magic."

Imani crossed her arms over her chest. A rare grin bared the sharp whites of her teeth. "Magic?"

"You know," Tisper said, tapping her nails against the glass. "Magic. All that stuff that makes her heal fast—and whatever else she does."

It took a moment to understand her beyond the slurring, but when the words registered to Sadie, she nearly choked on her wine with a gasp. "Could that be it? The shell is everything that makes her impervious to... anything."

Imani looked more calculative than Sadie had ever seen her—the hard, distant face of a woman who'd just peeled open her deepest thoughts. "Acadia, do you recall the legend of Chineye?"

Acadia rose a brow to her fellow Alpha. "The Kenyan Queen?"

"She ruled all of Africa," said Imani. "But she was eventually eaten by her own wolves."

Alex looked up to the sound of it. "But how could that happen if she was a queen?"

"A young Omega had come to put forth a grievance with the queen. From what I recall, the legend goes that Chineye laughed in the face of his simple request and the omega attacked her. In any situation, a queen could disarm her wolves by turning them to men again, but Chineye chose instead to take a dagger and end the wolf's life herself. Her blade cut through the wolf, killing him—but in the last second of life, the Omega sunk his jaws into her throat. Chineye never healed. She laid there, bleeding to death, until her wolves made a feast of her for all the pain she'd caused them."

"So much killing," grumbled Tisper. "Queens can just... go around killing their wolves like that?"

"No," said Imani. And then the usual stoic way about her slipped away. Her eyes widened and she stood up suddenly from her seat. "No. By oath, they can't kill anything. That's it. That's it. Give me the riddle," she demanded of Sadie, who he reached into her pack pocket and passed the folded paper across the table. Imani laid it down flat and read the riddle to herself.

"A tortoise who favors the wicked gallows," she said. "A queen who finds joy in the punishment her own people. This is saying that a corrupt queen who breaks her own oath will face her own consequences. And that consequence?"

When no one else spoke, Sadie found herself saying it, "Mortality?"

"But that doesn't make sense," Alex said. "If that was true, Ziya wouldn't be alive right now. Not after all the killing she's done."

"He's right," said Acadia. "And there were many queens that came before Chineye who'd killed for the sake of fun. Assassination attempts never worked on them."

Sadie frowned and looked to that rumpled sheet of paper, now stained with a drop of blood-red wine. Whatever the answer was, it must exist in the last riddle.

The key to killing Ziya was in the trees.

That night, Sadie dreamed of a place where the forest trees turned brown. The ground was nothing but dirt, dried grass, and oak trees shedding multitudinous colors into the wind. There was nothing around her, nothing before her but trees and stone and dirt paths—and the howl of a chilly wind. And for some reason, she held the Celestine sword in her hand.

"Told you it would be a girl," said a voice from behind her. When Sadie turned, it was to the sight of two women, much taller than herself—beautiful olive skin and slender almond eyes, glowing in the saffron sunlight. "I told you, didn't I Caliah?"

"I never said it wouldn't!"

"Ah, but you rolled your eyes at me."

"I rolled my eyes because you've not shut up about her, Cadence."

One was taller than the other, but they shared the same dark, curly hair—wild, like clouds of soft cotton that perched on their shoulders. If not for the slightly different shapes to their faces, they'd look nearly like twins.

Was this really Cadence and Caliah?

"Why am I here?" Sadie asked, the sword a heavy reminder in her hands.

"A better question," said Caliah, "is what are you?"

"A witch," Sadie answered, "like you."

Cadence smiled—but kind as it was, it made her second guess herself. "Not quiet, my love," she said. "Not quite."

Then Sadie woke, launching suddenly from her sleep to the sound of clattering glass downstairs. It was quiet, but it was just enough to rock her awake, and deciding she could use a glass of water herself, Sadie clamored off of the floor and tiptoed out of the room.

The lights were off and it took much too long for her eyes to adjust. But by the time she'd reached the living room, Sadie could tell it was Jaylin in the kitchen; she recognized the old NASA t-shirt he wore. He was hunched over the counter, staring at the glass in his hands, gnawing bite marks into his lower lip. Overthinking again.

"Well look at you," she purred, stepping in beside him to take a water glass from the cupboard. "Hardly recognized you in the dark. How much do you weigh now? Bet you could lay Matt flat in one hit." She filled her glass with the tap, but by the time the water reached the brim, Jaylin had still said nothing. She caught the stench wafting from his tumbler and Sadie wrinkled her nose. "Is that whiskey?"

"I don't know," Jaylin admitted. "Didn't want to turn the lights on."

Sadie scoffed and closed the open liquor cupboard above his head. "You're lucky they don't store their bleach up there."

Jaylin didn't give her so much as a titter. He stayed hunched over the counter, staring down at the liquor in his glass. "Think we can find her on our own?" he asked.

"On our own? Ziya? Why would we even try?"

"Because we can't rely on anyone else," Jaylin said. "I can't. I..." He took a deep breath, and Sadie could hear the threads in him snapping, one by one. "I know you're scared. I can go alone, I just... do you think it's possible?"

"I think if you go hunting Ziya down alone, you're gonna get yourself killed," Sadie said. "I think that despite how much you want to save Quentin and how hard you're trying, this isn't one of those things you can pull on your own."

"Would anyone like to know what I think?"

Sadie jumped when she heard him. Nicon stood at the entrance of the kitchen, his hair, his clothes, his face caked in blood. The stink of it brought her back to the ballroom and she cupped her nose in her hand.

"I think you're a Warden," Nicon said. "Do you know what that is, Jaylin?"

Jaylin eyed him, shook his head, and tossed back the last of his whiskey.

"I think they were lichund," Nicon said. "No one ever referred to them as lichund, but the sketches of them—they're almost exactly the same. Warden were guardians."

"Of werewolves?" asked Sadie.

"Of all of us," Nicon said. "Werewolves, witches, humans—the forests and everything in them. They roamed alone until they died, guarding small villages, aiding the animals, bringing food to the young and warding off evil. Warding off true lichunds, like the one you killed. That's how they came to be known as wardens."

Jaylin tipped himself another finger of whiskey.

Nicon watched him drink in a mite of silence. And Sadie couldn't help but think that he looked a lot like he was admiring a piece of abstract art. "I think you were made to protect the wolves," he said, "and in Ziya's case, it's no different. Quentin was the fate that brought you here."

"So what do I do?" Jaylin asked. "If I can't touch her—if I can't kill her then what do I do?"

"You pave the way for those that can," Nicon said simply. "If you want to go to war, Jaylin, we will go to war. Every wolf in this Watch will follow you into the gut of battle with Ziya. But that's not what you want, is it?"

For the first time, Jaylin looked up from his whiskey. "You'll all die."

"Maybe," Nicon said. "Maybe not."

"And us?" Sadie asked. "Do you think we'd die too?"

"Maybe," Nicon said again. "Ziya's immorality knows no bounds. But humans have become a commodity to her. They're perfect weapons against Qamar, who wouldn't dare harm a human. Even one sent by her sister's hand. She made an exception for the hunters, and only after they'd killed several of her wolves. It goes against her oath."

That's right. The oath. Imani had mentioned it at the table, but Sadie hadn't had the chance to ask. So despite the smell of him, Sadie moved closer to Nicon. "The queens have an oath?"

"They're sworn into power on the death oath. When Ziya became queen, she made a promise of mercy. An oath to protect her kin, to respect the land of the forest wolves, and to never harm humankind. Those are the three unwritten laws of the queens. Men, wolves and the creatures born between them—those are her children, to protect until Gana takes her soul."

Sadie's glass nearly slipped from her fingers.

The story Imani had told of Chineye—it made perfect sense now. She'd taken the life of an innocent man and her consequence had been the death of her. Maybe it was a matter of timing. Maybe the queen had to be killed right after she'd spilled blood herself.

All they had to do was wait until Ziya took another life. Then she was as good as dead.

Nicon ran his hand back through the tacky blood in his hair and shut his eyes briefly. "I'm due for a shower," he said. "Good evening to you both." And then he left, and that horrible smell went with him.

Sadie waited until the bathroom door had shut and the shower faucet began. Then she took the glass away from Jaylin, pulled him in close by the arm and whispered, "I think I know how to kill Ziya."

Jaylin's eyes set on her with a force. "How?" he asked.

"I'll tell you," Sadie said. "But you have to let me come with."