CHAPTER 9   

She hit the pavement. Her hands, thrown out to protect her face, hit first, skidding along the road. Her breath was knocked out of her. She rolled sideways, skinning her elbows and scraping the back of her head. Everything felt raw and awful. For a moment she stayed there, dirt in her mouth, waiting for the pain to ebb.

She could hear the wheels of her bike spinning and something else—the horned boy coming toward her. His footfalls on the asphalt sounded as loud as snapped bones.

He knelt down, looming over her.

His skin was pale, seemingly bleached by the chill. He was still wearing the fine embroidered blue tunic he’d had on for generations, the fabric darkened by rain, ivory boots spattered by mud. His horns rose up over his temples and curved back behind his sharp ears, close to his head and ending in points just past his jawline, so that, to someone at a distance, they might appear like thick braids. Even his bone structure—the planes of his cheekbones, height of his brow—seemed subtly different from a human’s. He seemed overall more finely wrought, like a crystal wineglass revealed to someone used to coffee mugs. His eyes were a mossy green that made her think of deep pools and cool water, and he looked down at her with those otherworldly eyes as though puzzling something through.

He was every bit as monstrously beautiful as he’d ever been. You could drown in beauty like that.

“What did you do to her?” Hazel asked, trying to push herself up. Blood was seeping from both of her knees and along her arms, making her pajamas stick to her skin. She didn’t think she could run; her muscles were too stiff and too sore.

He reached for her, and she realized that she was going to have to run anyway. She got up, lurched three steps, and saw that the girl lying in the ditch was Amanda Watkins.

Her skin was white—not pale or even sickly, but white as a sheet of paper is white. The only pinkish parts were along the very tips of her fingers and around the inside of her eyes. Her lips were slightly apart, and the cup of her mouth was filled with dirt, a few vines curling out from the corners. She had a high heel on one foot, but her other foot was bare and mud-covered.

“Amanda?” Hazel called, staggering toward her. “Amanda!”

“I know you. I know your voice,” the boy said, sounding hoarse, as if he’d been shouting for a week. He grabbed her arm and, when she whirled on him, stared at her with glittering, hungry eyes. “You’re the very girl I sought.”

She felt as if she’d waited her whole life for him to wake up and say those words to her. But now that he had, she was absolutely terrified. She tried to pull away. His fingers held her in place, as chill as if they’d been plunged into ice water, seeming to reach through her skin. She opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out was a strangled sound.

“Quiet,” he said, his voice harsh. “Be quiet. I know who you are, Hazel Evans, sister of Benjamin Evans, daughter of Greer O’Neill and Spencer Evans. I recognize your voice. I know all your foolish desires. I know you and I know what you’ve done and I need you.”

“You… you what?” She imagined her nine-year-old self whispering to him through the glass and blushed a hot, shameful red that went all the way down her throat. Could he really have heard all the things they’d said to him, all the ridiculous things that had been said around him, for all the time he was there?

“Walk.” He pulled her along the road. “We must go. We’re out in the open here.”

She struggled against his grip, but he pulled her along, squeezing her wrist tightly enough to bruise.

“What about Amanda? We can’t just leave her!” she shouted.

“She sleeps,” he said. “My fault, perhaps, but I cannot alter it, nor is it of much consequence now. Things will be worse for her and for everyone else if you don’t tell me where it is.”

“Where what is?”

“The sword.” He sounded exasperated. “The one you used to free me. Do not play at ignorance.”

Dread turned Hazel’s stomach. She thought of the nearly empty trunk underneath her bed. “A sword?”

“Return Heartsworn. Things will go better for you if you simply do as I ask. If you trifle with me, I will have to show you why that is unwise.”

“Ask?” Hazel snapped automatically. “You call what you just said ‘asking’?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She urged herself to think. It was disorienting to stumble along, aware that he might be taking her somewhere to kill her and at the same time, confusingly, embarrassed that he was going to kill her while she was wearing her pajamas and wellies. If she’d known she was going to die at his hand, she would have dressed up.

His lip curled into an almost smile, and he jerked her arm. “Asking in the nicest way I know.”

“Want my help?” she said. “Then tell me what you did to Amanda.” As she spoke, she fumbled in the pocket of her coat for her cell phone. He might be a magical creature, a real knight, but he’d still been asleep for a hundred years. She bet he didn’t know shit about modern technology.

“I? You are much mistaken if you think it was I who did that. There are worse things than me in these woods.”

“What kinds of things?” Hazel asked.

“You have perhaps heard of a creature who was once one of the Folk and is now something else. A creature of mud and branch, moss and vine. She hunts me. It was she who set upon your Amanda. No blade but Heartsworn could even scratch her, so you can see it would be in your own best interest to give me the sword.”

Oh, Hazel thought, a little bit dazedly. No big deal. Just the monster from the heart of the woods, the creature of legend. She tried to keep her fingers steady as she typed to Ben without looking at her phone, grateful for a lifetime of texting during class: HELP AMANDA HURT ON GROUSE RD!!! MONSTER!

“You’ve freed me.” He looked back at her—and for a moment she thought that underneath all his cold fury, there was something else. “And you are likely to pay for your kindness in most grievous coin. Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know for sure I was involved until tonight. You said you heard my voice—was there anyone else there? Anyone giving me orders?”

He shook his head. “Only you. But by the time I came awake—truly awake—the sky was bright and you were gone.”

“I don’t remember that. I don’t remember going anywhere last night.”

He sighed. “Try to remember. Consider the fate of Amanda Watkins, who, by the way, I know you didn’t like. Still, the next victim might be someone you do care about.”

She startled at his saying that. He was a stranger, yet the way he spoke and the press of his fingers against her arm were oddly intimate. She’d imagined a scene so very like this so many times that to walk beside him in the dim woods had become half nightmare and half fantasy, all unreal. Hazel felt dizzy, as though she might faint. She kind of wanted to faint, so she didn’t have to deal with any of it. “Just because I don’t like her doesn’t mean I want her to die.”

“Well, then,” he said, as though that settled everything. “Perfect. She’s not yet dead.”

He didn’t even glance in her direction. He just kept walking.

They left the road, wading through the brush. Her heart felt as if it were going to thud its way out of her chest.

The phone in her pocket buzzed, but she couldn’t risk looking at it. She felt better knowing that Ben must have received her message, that someone was going to find Amanda.

“We left you some food and stuff,” she said, trying to fill the scary silence of their walk and disguise the sound of her phone, which buzzed again. Ben must be calling her. “My brother and I, we’re on your side.”

He didn’t need to know she had doubts about his story.

A pained expression flashed across the horned boy’s face. “I am no hob or hearth spirit, to be obligated by gifts.”

“We weren’t trying to obligate you,” she said. “We were trying to be nice.”

Given the Folk’s obsession with manners, she wondered if he might feel at least a little bit bad about dragging her through the forest. She hoped he felt awful.

The horned boy bowed his head slightly, a thin smile on his face that she thought might be self-disgust. “You may call me Severin,” he said. “Now we are both nice.”

Which was as close to an apology as one of the Folk was likely to give, given that they prized their own names highly. Maybe he really did feel bad, but Hazel got the sense that it wouldn’t matter. Whatever drove him, its hooks bit deeper than courtesy.

Time slipped by as they walked, her stumbling and his walking beside her, catching her arm if she moved too far or too fast, her body still sore from crashing her bike, her mind buzzing. They plodded on until they returned to the grove.

Severin let go of her and went to the remains of the casket. “Do you know what this was? Not glass,” he told her, sliding his hand inside, running his fingers over the lining. “Nor is it crystal. Nor is it stone. It’s made of tears. Almost impossible to shatter. Made by one of the finest craftsmen in all of Faerie, Grimsen. Made to hold a monster.”

Hazel shook her head numbly. “You?”

He snorted. “No one tells the old stories anymore, do they?”

“What are we doing?” Hazel asked him.

He took a deep breath. “You need to recall who has Heartsworn. Who gave you the blade and guided your hand? Who told you how to break the casket and end the curse?”

“I can’t—”

“You can,” he said softly. He brought up one hand to her cheek. His fingers were cool against her hot skin, brushing back hair from her face. She shuddered. “For all our sakes, you must.”

She shook her head, thinking of the sword she’d found beside Wight Lake all those years ago, the one that had disappeared from beneath her bed. “Even if I had the first idea where the sword was, what makes you think I would tell you?”

“I know what you want of me,” he said, coming closer. Everything else seemed to melt away. He lifted her chin, canting her face toward his. “I know every one of your secrets. I know all your dreams. Let me persuade you.”

And, pressing her back against the blackened trunk of a tree, he kissed her. His lips were hot, his mouth sweet. And inside her, a warm, numb darkness flooded her thoughts, making her skin shiver.

Then Severin moved back from her, leaving her to smooth down the front of her pajama top.

“Benjamin Evans,” he called into the darkness. “Come out. Don’t worry about interrupting us.”

“Get the hell away from her!” Ben’s voice, shaky but determined, came from the other side of the grove.

It was the worst thing about being a redhead, Hazel thought, the way blushes splashed up onto her cheeks and down her neck until she practically felt as if her scalp were burning.

Ben stepped farther out of the shadows, looking flushed, too. He was carrying an ax their mom used sometimes to chop kindling for the stove in the art studio. “Hazel, are you okay?”

Her brother had come to save her, like in the old days. She couldn’t quite believe it.

The elf knight smiled, and there was an odd light in his eyes. He stalked toward Ben languorously, spreading his arms wide in invitation. “Going to split me open as though you were a woodsman in a fairy tale?”

“Going to try,” Ben said, but there was a quaver in his voice. He was tall and gangly, all loose limbs and freckled skin. He didn’t look dangerous. He didn’t even look like he could heft the ax without straining.

She felt a hot wave of shame that Ben had seen the horned boy kiss her, when for so long he’d been something they’d shared between them.

“Ben,” Hazel cautioned. “Ben, I’m okay. If anyone’s going to fight, it should be me.”

Her brother’s gaze flickered to her. “Because you don’t need anyone’s help, right?”

“No, that’s not—” She took a step toward him, before Severin drew his golden knife.

“It would be better if neither of you fought me,” Severin said. “You’ve got the range and your weapon may bite deeply, but I’ll wager I’m faster. So what are you to do? Will you run at me? Will you swing wildly and hope for the best?”

“Just let her come home,” Ben said. His voice shook a little, but he hadn’t backed down, not an inch. “She’s scared. It’s the middle of the night and she’s not even dressed. What do you think you’re doing, grabbing her like that?”

Severin slid a little closer, moving as lightly as a dancer. “Oh, you mean instead of grabbing you?”

Ben flinched as though he’d been slapped. “I don’t know what you think you’re—”

“Benjamin,” Severin said, his voice dropping low. His face was inhumanly beautiful, his eyes as cold as the sky above the clouds, where the atmosphere is too thin to breathe. “I have heard every word you’ve ever said to me. Every honeyed, silver-tongued word.”

Ben’s mortified blush deepened. Hazel wanted to call to him, to say that Severin had tried the same thing on her, to tell him the same thing had worked on her, but she didn’t want to be a distraction. Ben and Severin had begun to circle each other warily.

“I’m not going away without Hazel,” Ben said, bringing his chin up. “You can’t embarrass me into leaving my own sister.”

He was going to get himself killed. He was no longer quick-fingered, no longer carrying a set of pipes hanging around his throat on a dirty string. He couldn’t play, and he’d never fought with a blade. She had to do something—she had to save Ben.

Hazel hefted the biggest stick she could find. The weight was oddly comforting in her hand, and the stance she went into was as automatic and easy as drawing breath. As soon as the fighting started, she was going to rush Severin and hopefully catch him off guard. It might not be honorable, but it had been a long time since she played at knighthood.

“Don’t be foolish,” Severin told her brother. “I was trained to a sword when I was a child. I watched my mother butchered in front of me. I have cut and I have killed and I have bled. You can’t possibly win against me.” He glanced at Hazel. “Your sister at least seems to know what she’s about. Her stance is good. Yours is abysmal.”

So much for catching him by surprise. She was just going to have to hope for dumb luck.

“If you’re going to kill me, then do it,” Ben told him. “Because if you want to take her, that’s what you’re going to have to do.”

For a frozen moment Severin brought up his blade. Their gazes caught, snagged silk on a thorn.

Hazel held her breath.

With a snort, the elf knight sheathed his knife. He shook his head, looking at Ben oddly. Then he made an elaborately formal bow, his hand nearly sweeping the ground.

“Go, then, go, Hazel and Benjamin Evans,” Severin said. “I release my claim on you tonight. But our business is not done; our affairs are far from settled. I will come for you again; and when I do, you will be eager to do as I wish.” With that, he turned from them and walked deeper into the woods.

Hazel looked at Ben. He was breathing fast, as though from a physical fight. The ax slipped from his fingers onto the forest floor, and he regarded her with wild, wide eyes. “What just happened? Seriously, Hazel. That was insane.”

She shook her head, equally baffled. “I think you impressed him with the sheer force of your stupidity. How did you find me?”

A corner of his mouth curled up. “When you weren’t on Grouse Road, I tracked the GPS in your phone. You were close enough to the casket that I thought you might be headed there.”

“What is that quote?” Hazel said, walking to him, too glad he’d come to object to the danger he’d put himself in. “The Lord protects fools, drunks, and dumb-ass ax wielders?”

He touched her shoulder gently, running his fingers against the fabric of her pajamas and sucking in his breath, as if he was imagining how much all her scrapes had hurt. She realized she was covered in dirt from her fall—dirt and blood. “Are you really okay?”

Hazel nodded. “I crashed my bike when I saw him and Amanda. I’m okay, but I don’t think she is.”

“I called the sheriff’s department, so they must have sent someone over by now. Are you going to tell me what you were doing on Grouse Road?” Ben asked.

Following you, she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat. If she told him that, he’d ask her about the earring and then ask all the questions that inevitably followed.

She got into his car instead, resting her head against the dashboard. “I’m really tired. Can we just go home?”

Ben nodded once and walked over, squatting down beside her, inside the open door, visibly swallowing his questions. His blue eyes were black in the moonlight. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She nodded. “Thanks to you.”

He grinned and pushed himself upright. One hand moved to smooth down her hair. “Our prince really was something, huh?”

Hazel nodded, thinking of Severin’s mouth against hers. “Severin,” she said. “Our prince’s name is Severin.”

Once, Ben had told Hazel a tale about a great wizard who took his heart and hid it in the knothole of a tree so that when his enemies stabbed him where his heart was supposed to be, he wouldn’t die. Ever since Hazel was small, she’d hid her heart in stories about the horned boy. Whenever someone hurt her, she comforted herself with tales of him being fascinating, a little bit awful, and desperately in love with her.

Those stories had kept her heart safe. But now, when she thought about Severin, when she remembered his moss-green eyes and the horrible, shivery thrill of his words, she didn’t feel safe at all. She hated him for waking up and being real and stealing her dreams of him away.

He wasn’t their prince anymore.