slipped in the mud and shoved aside the kneeling knights. Ren skidded to a stop beside him.
Slim in his black uniform. Facedown, black hair everywhere. The mud was dark. Lukasz fell, shaking, to his knees. Ren heard him sob, fell next to him. He ignored her.
Lukasz turned the body over. It was Franciszek.
He was dead.
“No,” he moaned. “No, God, no . . .”
The cold, wet body. The stained coat. The bullet, buried in this heart. Franciszek. Poor, frightened Franciszek.
“I’m so sorry,” whispered Lukasz. “I’m so, so sorry—”
Then real tears came to Ren. People shifted, and Ren realized they were surrounded. Nine black-haired men and one black-haired woman looked down at them. The woman and one of the men wore silver crowns wrought from dragon bones. Most of the others wore black uniforms, but some wore leather and fur.
One of them was the spitting image of their father, with a beaky nose. A second looked almost exactly like Lukasz, but with sadder eyes. One with a bright, pretty face, now stricken with grief. Two men who could only be the twins, one with silver teeth and the other with a big purple scar. One as asymmetrical as he was mesmerizing. Another who was quite possibly the most perfectly handsome human Ren had ever seen. One brother who looked younger, a little different, from the others.
“What have I done?” Lukasz asked. He was crying.
Eight brothers, back from the dead. One lost forever. They fell to their knees, and Ren felt like an intruder.
“This is my fault,” he choked. “This is all my fault—”
The twins flanked Lukasz, each with a hand on his shoulder. He had his hands over his face, and Ren didn’t know what to do. The brothers crowded in, barely even noticing her. They went to Lukasz. Comforting him, consoling him. Telling him it wasn’t his fault and Franciszek had known what he was doing.
Ren rubbed the tears out of her eyes, getting to her feet. Even after everything they’d done, they still hadn’t been able to save their brothers.
Queen Dagmara stood a few feet away, beside a tall man with a dark beard. He wore a golden crown and a deep violet military uniform edged in gold. It took Ren a moment to recognize the insignia on his cap, so similar to the one Lukasz used to wear with his Wrony uniform.
It was the profile of a lynx.
Her father.
Ren approached them. The circled knights and soldiers parted as she passed. She felt their gaze on her. She imagined they were wondering who she was, dressed in glass armor.
Her parents—the parents she had never known—stood at the end of the gauntlet.
“Irena—” said the queen.
“Darling—” said her father.
They made as if to pull her in, but Ren took a stiff step backward. Her eyes shifted from human to lynx and back again.
The king drew back.
“My name is Ren,” she said. “I am the queen of the forest.”
The king and queen stared, and Ren realized, with a strange sort of detachment, that she did not even know her own father’s name.
“Queen of the forest?” he repeated. He glanced at his wife. “My forest? Surely, she doesn’t mean—”
The Dragon moved toward them. The knights shrank back. Even the king fell silent. The Dragon stopped just behind Queen Dagmara and her husband, and while the king turned a very pale green, it spoke:
She has been raised in the dens of lynxes, said the Dragon. She has run wild with wolves. She is human, animal, and monster.
Ren wondered if they, too, could hear the Dragon, because at that moment, the valley went quiet. The Glass Mountain had disappeared, and the lake was green with lichens and fish. Every resurrected knight, soldier, and peasant waited.
She is your queen.
There was a chorus of squeaking, of old leather and unoiled metal, and ten thousand knights took a knee. Ren glanced back at her human parents. Queen Dagmara was beaming. The king looked like he might be sick on his closer subjects.
Then the Dragon cautiously approached Ren. As it stepped over the king and queen, the king’s face turned an unusual greenish color. I will help you save this queendom.
“Kingdom,” Ren corrected automatically.
No, said the Dragon. Not anymore.
Ren held out her hand and stroked the golden nose, and the Dragon added: I am sorry I could not save your brother.
Ren’s throat burned. She had hated the humans for thinking the worst of her, and she’d been no better. She’d been so blind to every one of those fires. She’d