Selina’s POV
The Shadow-Woods did not sleep. Even as the plum-coloured light of the impending eclipse deepened, the iron-oaks groaned with a subterranean vitality that felt foreign and terrifying to me. For twenty years, the Grey Thicket had been my entire world – a silent, claustrophobic expanse of pines where I hunted for rabbits and gathered herbs, listening to the incessant, jagged static in my head.
My only anchor had been Karina. She had been my teacher and protector, and though she was gone, her warnings still echoed in my mind.
Never go to the city, she had warned me, her eyes tight with a terror I had been too young to understand. And never, under any circumstances, let them see your eyes under a full moon.
I had lived in those woods like a wild animal, ignorant of the crown
