The Orphan Queen

He touched his mask, a distant look crossing his eyes. “Just because I wear a mask doesn’t mean you don’t see the real me.” He took my hands and squeezed. “And just because I don’t know your real name doesn’t mean I don’t know who you truly are

“Will—” He touched my hands, halting my progress.
“I won’t look.”
His eyes were wide, dubious, but he released my hands and let out a shaky breath.
“Wait.” I withdrew and pushed back my hood, and fumbled with my scarf, pulling it from around my throat. One last look into his eyes, I lifted the scarf to cover mine. His fingers grazed my temples, pushing back my hair as I tied the scarf behind my head. His fingertips ran down my throat, down my collarbone and arms.
The world was dark when Black Knife lifted my hands to his face.
He’d taken off his mask.
I slipped one hand to the back of his neck, my fingers sliding into strands of soft hair, and pulled him close.
Our lips touched with soft, hesitating movements

Somehow, with that single command, I’d brought the wraith to life.
And it knew my name

“Obviously.” He crossed his arms and kept my gaze. “Someone was yelling your name. Your true name. Who were you meeting?”
The memory of something calling me back into the wraithland shuddered through me, but now, back in Skyvale, with Patrick scowling at me, everything from the wraithland felt . . . as though it had happened to a separate person, or in another life.

“There was a voice as you rode up the mountain,” Herman said. “Yelling a name. Do you know anything about that?”
I shook my head, keeping my eyes wide and frightened

“Wilhelmina!”
I kicked Ferguson harder, but it wasn’t necessary. He gave another burst of speed at the blast of wraith stench. A finger of white mist crept behind us, relentless as it filled the width of the road and navigated the curves with ease. Steel screeched: the railroad tracks bent where the wraith touched.
Light flared ahead as the sun began to set behind me. The wraith screamed and called out my name again, but when I looked over my shoulder, the mist was retreating down the mountainside, leaving only the twisted metal of railroad tracks to mark where it had been.
What had scared it? What could scare wraith?
Above, the light flared again, and I laughed.
Mirrors

“Wilhelmina?” The voice came from behind me, and I spun

Though all this land I walked through had been filled with wraith before, now the forest seemed almost normal. Not poisoned. Too late, I wished I’d looked around the town more, after I’d awakened. I should have looked at the floating road, and the upside-down tree.
I’d used a lot of magic and I didn’t know what the consequences would be. Especially since I hadn’t been able to put anything back to sleep

The wraithland was different now, at least this part, and it was certainly because of what I’d done, though my brain was too sluggish to sift through the facts

Frantically, I dug through the grasshoppers at my feet, finding my notebook and other things I’d been carrying. With everything tucked into pockets or my belt, I waded through the drifts until I found the house where the people had been trapped. The door was blocked, but the windows were still uncovered. I peered inside.
Everyone lay dead on the floor.
Released from their prison, they’d dropped into broken heaps; if they hadn’t truly been dead before, they were now. Even the woman who’d blinked at me—maybe—had that stillness of lifelessness