Wren takes one long drink — the brew tastes of ginger and something bitter and she suspects it's the last warm thing she'll have for a while — then sets the cup back on the stone. "Thank you," she says. Manners cost nothing even when the moon is a miser. Old Maret tips her felt hat. "Don't look back at it," the old woman says. "Not that it'll stop following. But it's better manners, and manners matter in old wood." Wren goes east. The white-barked trees find her before she finds them — a straight line of silver trunks appearing at the very edge of firelight, impossibly orderly among the gnarled black Thornwood. She follows them into the dark. Behind her, at no particular distance, she hears one soft footstep that is not hers. Then nothing. Just the mist, and the moonlight catching the pale bark ahead, and the growing certainty that Aldermere Hollow already knows she's coming.