Linette de la Forêt does not remember a time she has not lived on her family's sprawling estate, doing her best to escape the watchful gazes of her nurses and guards, with one goal in mind; the Mouth that lies at the edge of the property. Vast fields, meadows filled with flowers, forests half-tamed by careful pruning or left wild to grow as they would—none of that was as enticing to young Linette as the gaping Mouth into the Dungeon, a dark opening lined in moss-covered stones, gilded by flickering torchlight. The Dungeon called to her, as it had generations of Coursers, generations of her own family. Her older sister had fallen when Linette was only a year old, a tragedy of youthful exuberance, and so her parents guarded her, as they guarded her younger brother, forbidding forays into the Dungeon despite their own legacy. They carried the burden themselves, for had they not gladly told their own stories, spun their tales and the tales of their ancestors, for their foals to hear? Had they not described in breathless detail the danger and the rush of victory that came after it? 

Other parents might have blamed the sole survivor of that ill-fated group, a chocolate palomino filly whose parents had left her to the care of her aunt as soon as she could walk. Her aunt, Linette's nurse, a fierce chestnut who had fought plenty in her own day. 

If she was slow to pursue Linette when she escaped to the Mouth, she would only blame her old knees. 

But Atella had survived the chaos that had swallowed Annelise and her friends, the churning rocks, the skeletal creatures, the blood and the pain. She had survived, and not a word has she spoken since. She became Linette's shadow that day, and every day after, always a breath away from running. There is no comfort for Atella, not in the meadows, not in the shade beneath the trees. When Linette ventures back to the Mouth, she trembles, fear making her eyes wide and her sides frothed with sweat, but she follows, staring at the Mouth that swallowed her friends. 

It is a far cry from their home now, festooned with flowers and green growing things, filled with life. Some part of Atella died in there, Linette knows. But most of her lives, and Linette wants her friend to remember that. The copse of trees Linette has claimed for her own is hung with sparkling bits, shards of glass and flawed gems strung on silk threads so they spin in the slightest breeze, flashing with color and light. Sometimes, Atella stands and watches them for hours, entranced, and sometimes, when she shakes herself free, Linette almost thinks she might speak.

She hasn't yet. But someday...

Someday Linette will convince Atella to unburden herself of the guilt.