“Your knight?”

“Jeremy,” she said.

“He’s a knight?”

“Yes, and Rafe is my prince.”

Emilie stared at her. “Serious?”

“Serious? Shanandoah isn’t a kingdom that takes itself too seriously. But if you mean are they actually princes and knights, then yes. And I’m the queen here.”

Emilie rubbed her temples. “This is a lot to process.”

“Take your time.” Skya ate a handful of nuts and berries from her hat and offered it to Emilie, who took it but didn’t eat.

She had a thousand questions but hardly knew where to begin.

“How did I get here? I was listening to Jeremy and then I felt a tap on my shoulder—”

“That was me. I blew sleeping powder on you and carried you off.”

“Oh, great. Now I’ve been kidnapped. Sorry. That was insensitive.”

Her sister didn’t seem offended. “Not kidnapped. Rescued. You were ten seconds away from being snatched by two Bright Boys with burlap bags. More were on the way.”

“Bright Boys? Are Rafe and Jeremy safe?”

“They’re as safe as we can hope for right now. They’re with my Valkyries. While I’m away from the palace, my prince can serve in my place.”

“Your prince? Possessive much?”

“They swore their undying allegiance to me over fifteen years ago. They are as much mine as I’m theirs. My prince. My knight. I am their queen. Always. Even in other worlds.”

“Am I your princess?”

“You haven’t sworn your undying allegiance to me. But you’re a princess.”

“And you’re Skya,” she said again. “Not Shannon.”

“No one has called me Shannon since I came here. I never liked that name. Or, more like, I never liked the woman who gave it to me. But I loved my initials—S.K.Y. Add an A, and you get Skya.”

“It’s pretty,” Emilie said. “Very regal. But the kingdom’s called Shanandoah?”

“In school we studied the rivers of West Virginia—Monongahela and the Shenandoah. My teacher said that Shenandoah was a Native American word for ‘daughter of the stars.’ Sounded pretty. So I just changed the spelling to make it mine. But that’s what you get when you let a thirteen-year-old name a kingdom.”

Skya knocked two stones together, and sparks flew at the twigs and slivers of wood shavings inside the stone ring.

“So this is your kingdom, and you’re the queen. And there are people here?”

“Of course there are people here. Ten thousand last count.”

“Are they like…people people? Or like elves?”

Skya snorted a laugh.

“What? I woke up to see a unicorn in Jeremy’s lap, but I mention elves and that’s too far?”

“You’re right. Fair point. I just know them so well. Cady, who makes the bread for the palace. Olin, our farrier. Daisy, who keeps the aviary. It would be like if I asked you if your mother was an elf and your grandmother a fairy.”

“Mom was a tax attorney. Very boring and well paid. She would have much preferred to be an elf,” Emilie said.

“She took good care of you?”

“Great care of me. Best care of me. Zero complaints. Until she died. I did complain about that.”

“I’m glad she took such good care of you. I wanted to send Aurora to find you but had no idea where to send her. I worried about you.” A tendril of smoke danced around the twigs and wood. Skya bent down and blew on it.

“You were worried about me? I thought you were dead in the woods. I hired Jeremy to find your body.”

She scoffed and blew on the fire again. “He wishes I would let him find my body.”

That was it. Emilie had enough of being polite. “Skya. What happened? Seriously? How—”

“I don’t know,” she said. “One minute I was in Red Crow Forest. Next minute I was following an actual red crow here. All these tough-looking girls with swords rode up on horses and hailed me as their queen. I was only thirteen years old. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Then I thought I’d gone to heaven but skipped the dying part. Then I realized I hadn’t died and this wasn’t heaven, but it was, you know, almost heaven.” She smiled to herself.

“Oh. Well, that’s good.”

Skya blinked. “That’s good?”

Emilie swallowed. Her mouth was so dry she wanted to drink the entire blue river, fish and all.

“You hear about bad things happening to girls. And even when the men get caught and go to jail, what do the girls get? They just have to go back to school. If they’re lucky, I mean. Some of them go to the morgue.” She looked at Skya. “I always thought a girl who went through something like that at least deserves her own castle or maybe a private island or something.”

“I don’t have a castle. I have a palace. That looks just like a castle.”

Skya blew on the smoke again, and the first red flame sparked to life.

“Can you teach me to do that?” Emilie asked, nodding toward the fire.

“It takes a long time to learn. We don’t have much time.”

“Wait, why not?”

The fire was beginning to glow hot. Skya tossed some dry leaves on it, then sat back and let it burn.

“We have a problem,” Skya said. “I have to handle it.”

“What? Where?”