Chapter 24

We depart from the Village of Lost People. The Empress asks for my family's heartsblood and in its conduit I see ancient memories of their ancestors fleeing across the mountains, including glimpses of the Empress' Consort. Late at night I overhear Magdalena berating the Empress for her behaviour with me. We approach the Witch Queen's Village and Tira, Camellia, and I go on ahead to investigate. We run into Yneir, a golden crow spirit folk who instantly rubs me the wrong way. All of us grapple with the horror of the tortured grove and the mutilated Witch Queen herself before I sing the story of the fae to her and force her to return herself to the trees. Deep within the grove Magdalena and I find hidden Celestial trees and I meet my first Celestials in the Dreaming, including my now star-sister, Nal. In our final days in the village we rescue Dal, Bran looks into the future and nearly gets dragged into Magdalena's current, and then we formulate a plan to return the human half-fae to the trees and let them be reborn properly. People are developing an annoying habit of referring to me as 'future Empress'.