Free Foxheart by Claire Legrand Page B

ones.
    â€œAre you ready to become the witch you were born to be?”

.12.
S OME S ORT OF W ITCHY T HING

    Q uicksilver let Anastazia’s question linger in the air while she turned it over in her head.
    Was she ready to fight? Ready to become a witch? She could not imagine how to answer. So much had happened in the last few days—most of all in the last few hours—that she had hardly had time to catch her breath.
    â€œHang on a moment,” Sly Boots spoke up, pounding his fist against the pillow. “The only thing we’re going to do is return to our own time. I mean, is there really any question about this? My parents are there, our home is there. We can’t just leave itbehind.” Silence met his words. He looked to Quicksilver, his face tense and earnest. “Quicksilver?”
    She could not look at him. Now that he had said the words aloud, it was very easy to decide that she wanted to stay in this time after all. For what was there for her to return to? She had nothing and no one. The only creature in the world she cared about was sitting by the window—well, except for the girls and the sisters of her convent, but when had they ever cared about her? Although even they didn’t deserve whatever the wolves had done to them.
    â€œIf we defeat the Wolf King,” Fox murmured, as though he had heard the thoughts in her head, “then we’ll change the future, and they’ll be all right, won’t they? They’ll never be attacked, because the Wolf King will never have been alive to attack them.”
    Quicksilver considered his sharp, whiskered face. “I suppose you’re right.”
    â€œI’m afraid there’s no way to return just yet,” Anastazia said. “Not only does such an act require much more powerful magic than we have access to at the moment, it also would require Fox to sacrifice—”
    â€œAbsolutely not,” Quicksilver interrupted. “There will be nosacrifices here.” She tilted up his face. “I promise I’ll never make you do that, Fox. Never. ”
    Fox huffed indignantly. “I should think not.”
    â€œWhat do you expect me to do?” asked Sly Boots. “Leave my parents to die of fever or be killed by the Wolf King when he burns Willow-on-the-River to the ground?”
    â€œDo keep in mind,” said Anastazia evenly, “that if we succeed in our task, and therefore change the future, we could prevent your parents from ever getting cursed in the first place.”
    Sly Boots opened his mouth and shut it again, looking stumped.
    â€œBut in the meantime,” Anastazia continued, “we cannot afford to concern ourselves with the fates of individuals. This is a war. We are fighting to save our kind.”
    â€œWitches aren’t my kind,” Sly Boots pointed out, his voice low. “They’re the reason my parents are ill. And now they’re the reason why I’ve been separated from them.” The expression on his face reminded Quicksilver of how he had looked in his parents’ bedroom, right before he had shattered the bowl against the wall.
    Quicksilver rolled her eyes. “No one forced you to come thieving with me. You could have said, ‘No thank you, I’d rathercry at home alone in my slippers,’ and you wouldn’t have been there when the Wolf King came, and Fox and I would have come back to the past by ourselves.”
    Flushing, Sly Boots said, “Well, I didn’t ask you to break into my home and try to rob me, did I?”
    â€œHah! As if you’d anything worth stealing.”
    Sly Boots shot to his feet. “I would have had something worth stealing—lots of somethings—if I hadn’t had to sell it all to get medicine for my parents, and they would have never taken ill were it not for you—you—”
    Anastazia raised a cool eyebrow. “Yes? Go on. Us what?”
    Quicksilver crossed her arms