And I knew that if I did nothing, in another moment he’d be gone. I would be free. I could escape—or at least try. But I thought of the forest cathedral, the scarlet leaves sifting down in silence. The look on his face when he’d transformed into a raven in my parlor. The smell of change on the wild wind, and the way he had let me turn his head, his eyes on mine full of sorrow. All those wonders crumbling to dust, without a trace of them left in the world.
