Free Moonkind (Winterling) by Sarah Prineas

her own human power, the power to change, to grow, to live . Maybe it would be enough to break the spell the Forsworn had put on this tower.
    She got to her feet. “Bee,” she said, and the bee buzzed from her sleeve to land on the finger she held up. Sending it away would leave her more alone, and there wasn’t much chance of it helping, but she had to try. “Go and find my true friends,” she told it. Fray and Twig, she meant, in the Summerlands. “If you can, lead them back here.” She raised her hand, and the bee lifted from her finger. “All right?”
    Zmmmmrmmrmmm, the bee answered— yes . It climbed through the heavy air to the trapdoor. Then it was a dark spot against the sky, and then, with a buzz, it was gone.
    Fer took a deep breath. Now she had to figure out a way to break the power of the Forsworn and escape.

Eleven
    Rook waited in Old Scrawny’s rooms until night. The stick-servants had brought the wizened Birch-Lady back with them, and they’d cleaned the glamorie-muck off her and put her to bed. Arenthiel said he didn’t know if she’d recover or not, that they’d have to wait and see. For now, all she was doing was weeping and begging for a new glamorie.
    Well, Rook wasn’t waiting around to listen to that. A stick-servant led him through the dark hallways of the nathe, then along a secret side tunnel and out a door that opened straight into the forest. In his dog shape he made it to the Lake of All Ways without any run-ins with the nathe-wardens.
    Standing on the shore, the pebbles smooth and cool under his paw pads, he sniffed the air with his long dog nose and contemplated the Lake of All Ways. Pucks traveled a lot. They had to. For one thing, they were hunted out of all the lands, so they never stayed anywhere for long. For another, they were always looking for puck babies.
    That was how pucks came to be brothers. A puck was born to a fern-woman, or a couple of duck-people, or a Lady of a swampland—to anyone, really. As soon as the parents saw the black hair and flame-colored eyes and realized their new baby was a puck, they abandoned it, leaving it at a Way for other pucks to find.
    Usually he and his brothers found the babies in time.
    Though sometimes they didn’t.
    At any rate, Rook knew what land the Sea-Lord lived in. He’d been there before. The Way to that land was always open. It was open now.
    He might be walking into trouble where he’d need his teeth, so he stayed in his dog form. Then he stepped into the Lake, and into the Way.
    As Rook came through to the Sealands, he blinked at a setting sun that blasted him straight in the eyes.
    Then the smell hit him. A wave of dank stench—dead fish, dead seaweed, dead crabs and snails, all left behind by the sea and baked for days under a hot sun.
    Quickly he spat out his shifter-tooth, panting. Ugh. Too much of him was nose when he was a dog.
    Covering his mouth and nose with his arm, and breathing through his coat sleeve, he surveyed the Sealands. The last time he’d been here the clouds had been gray and spitting rain into a wind-tossed sea bashing itself against sharp, black rocks. On a patch of sandy beach, sleek seals had gathered, and seabirds had wheeled in the sky, diving to pluck tiny fish from the waves.
    Rook climbed from the rocky ledge where the Way opened down to the beach, where he stood looking out. The setting sun glared at him across a muddy plain edged by black rocks that were no longer wet with spray. The sea itself had receded; he saw it, flat and reflecting the bloodred sky, far out over the mud.
    The plain of mud was where the death smell was coming from. It was covered with dead snails, rotting fish, strands of decaying seaweed, the empty shells of crabs. No seabirds circled overhead. All was still and silent.
    Clearly something was wrong here. It must be the land’s Forsworn Lord’s broken oath causing it. But what was wrong, exactly?
    A sandy path led from the beach. It ran parallel to the shoreline,