Red went back to Elvesden Manor. She didn’t know where else to go.
She forgot about the Highwayman, forgot about the last two charms. None of it mattered, because James wasn’t her brother and there was no way she could win the task. She had been defeated before she had ever begun, and the fairies had known it all along.
She made no effort to try to get in secretively. She had neither the will nor the motivation, for by now she guessed that Tanya and Fabian would have told Florence the truth about what had really happened to Warwick. For the first time, she walked up to the grand front door. But as she reached out to knock, she stopped abruptly. Something wet and red was smeared on it.
A chill ran through her. She hammered at the door.
“Red!” he said, his mouth dropping open. “You came back—you’ve got to come quickly!”
He pulled her inside, not giving her the chance to speak. The urgency of his tone alerted her that something had happened, and as he kicked the door shut she followed, feeling dazed and numb.
“It’s Nell,” he said breathlessly, hurrying her toward the sitting room. “She’s in a bad way—we’re waiting for the doctor.”
They went in. Nell was lying on the couch with her eyes closed, and she was taking deep, trembling breaths. Tanya and Florence were standing over her. Florence was holding Nell’s arm in the air and pressing a cloth to her skin which was rapidly soaking crimson.
“Red? Quickly—the bracelet!” Tanya’s words came out in a rush. “Nell found the Dagger—but now she won’t stop bleeding!”
Red jolted out of her haze as she took in the scene before her. She pulled the leather pouch out of her pocket.
“I don’t understand,” she began. “How did Nell get involved…? Where is it?”
Fabian pointed to a table next to the armchair. “It’s on there. It won’t stop… dripping.” He shuddered.
The Dagger lay in a wet red pool that had spread to the edge of the table. As Red watched, it dripped onto the floor, soaking into the carpet like wine.
Nell opened her eyes and tried to sit up.
“Found it… for you,” she said weakly, and coughed. “Took some doing but I managed it. But somehow, the old scar on my arm opened up… so much blood… just kept getting worse—”
“Sit back, now,” said Florence, easing Nell back into the chair.
Red hurried over to the little table. Taking the bracelet out of the pouch, she dangled it over the widening pool, brushing it in the blood. They all heard it connect, and Red tucked it back into the pouch.
Florence kept the pressure on Nell’s arm for a little longer, but it was clear to see that the color was starting to flood back into her cheeks.
“Fabian, go and make some hot, sweet tea,” said Florence. “I think we all need a cup.” She looked Red up and down. “And you, girl, need a good meal inside you.” She shook her head, then turned back to Nell, cautiously lifting the towel. Beneath, Red saw an angry purple welt on Nell’s skin. Around it were layers of dried red-brown blood, but as Florence wiped away the sticky residue she gave a relieved sigh.
“It’s stopped. The wound has healed up again.”
She lowered Nell’s arm and rested it across her chest.
“Just stay there for a few minutes,” she said kindly. “You’ve had a bad shock.”
She motioned Tanya and Red out of the room, her finger to her lips.
“She needs to rest,” she said, once they were out in the hall. She led them to the kitchen, where Tanya explained what had happened.
“Nell found our notes about the charms in Fabian’s room,” she said. “She went to the Highwayman on her own to search,” she said. “She wanted to do something to make up for her part in what happened to your brother. She rented the room the robber used to hide his stolen goods in and found the charm straight away—it was hidden in the chimney where the robber used to keep his stash. But as soon as she’d touched it, it began dripping blood… and not the healing blood of the treasure. With every drip from the Dagger, her old scar dripped too.”
“So how did she get back here?” Red asked, dazed.
Tanya flushed. “After you left, Fabian and I continued to search. We didn’t want to let you carry on alone, so the plan was to find it and meet with you when you got there. But instead we found Nell. The landlord of the Highwayman let me use the telephone to call my grandmother to come and get us—”
“And finally tell me what was going on,” Florence interjected sternly.
Fabian set a pot of tea on the table and poured from it. Red stared at her cup for a minute before mechanically lifting it to sip. It tasted of nothing.
“What about you?” Tanya asked. “Did you find Elizabeth’s old cottage?”
She nodded. “I found it, and the charm, and a lot more besides.”
“Like what?” Tanya asked. “Why do you look so unhappy? There’s only one charm left to find!”
“It doesn’t matter,” Red said quietly. “It was all for nothing.”
“What are you talking about?” said Fabian.
“It was just a game,” said Red. “A game I could never win, because James is not my brother. He’s my cousin. My whole life is a lie and the fairies knew it. They never intended to give him back.”
“You’re not making sense,” Tanya said gently. “How do you know James isn’t your brother?”
In fits and starts, the story came out. Once Red had finished, Tanya, Fabian, and Florence sat in silence.
“So, you see?” she finished with a bitter laugh. “I’m not Rowan Fox and I don’t have a brother. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“But you are Rowan,” Tanya said passionately. “And James is still your cousin. He grew up with you and he loved you—does it matter that he’s your cousin and not your brother? If you say he belongs with you, then he does. And no one can change that.”
“And you can’t give up now,” Fabian pleaded. “What about my father? He’s still there, and you’re his only hope!”
“Exactly,” said Tanya. “We can’t leave Warwick there. You have to try, for his sake as well as James’s. We just need to find the last charm… the Book of Knowledge.”
“I know where it is,” Red said softly. “The only place left that it can be.”
“Where?” said Tanya and Fabian at once.
“The last place the bracelet went to,” she said. “It’s in the great court in the fairy realm. The place where the bargain was made.”
“Of course!” Fabian hit the table, upsetting his cup.
Red stared at the pouch in front of her. Then, for the last time, she opened it and took the bracelet out.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll go back. There’s nothing more they can take from me now anyway.” And before she could change her mind, she slipped the bracelet over her wrist.
Before her eyes, Tanya’s and Fabian’s faces and the kitchen of Elvesden Manor swam before her, as though she were viewing them from underwater. Colors and features merged into one great swirling pool, and she thought she heard Tanya call out to her, as if from a long distance away. New faces appeared, slowly coming into focus.
She found herself kneeling, looking down at a marbled floor. Laughter echoed in her ears, and she followed it to two familiar thrones ahead of her. The fairy court had gathered once more, divided in its entirety, waiting expectantly. This time there were no masks, no festivities. Just her and the court, split evenly down the middle, and only one throne was occupied. The other remained empty, its only occupant a crown of withered brown summer flowers.
As everything focused and sharpened, the figure in the winter throne stood, and Red looked up to meet the eyes of the young man who had worn the horned mask on the night the bargain was made. Now he wore a crown of berries and leaves, but still the horns, antlers in fact, were present. For the first time Red saw that they were not part of any mask, but part of him. He smiled down at her, and it was the smile of a predator—a wolf, or perhaps a fox. It was a triumphant smile, a victorious smile.
“Welcome back,” he said in a voice as smooth as cream.
Red got up, wrenching the bracelet off her wrist and throwing it to the floor.
“There,” she said viciously. “There are your charms, your precious Thirteen Treasures. I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain. I’ve come for my brother—and for my friend.”
The foxlike smile widened, more a baring of teeth than a real smile. The winter king clicked his fingers, and a goblin minion hurried to collect the bracelet from where Red had hurled it. Placing it on a fat velvet cushion, the goblin waddled over to the young man and bowed in a groveling gesture that made Red sick to her stomach.
In a deft, theatrical motion, the bracelet was swept up into the horned man’s fingers, where he made a show of counting for the benefit of his audience.
“Only twelve?” he said mockingly. “That is not what was agreed.”
“That’s because the thirteenth is here,” Red answered, holding his gaze. “With you, where the pact was made. It never left the court.”
“Clever,” said the horned man. “I’m impressed.” With a speed that stunned her he pitched the bracelet back at her.
Somehow, with pure reflex, she caught it before it hit her in the face. Turning it over in her hand, she counted thirteen charms. The Book of Knowledge was now connected. The bracelet was complete. Yet she knew that the task was not. There was still one final curse to be delivered.
“What happened to my brother?” she asked. “Where did he go when he was taken?”
Anger welled up inside her as the horned man cupped his hand behind his ear.
“I said, ‘Where’s my brother?’” she yelled. Her voice filled the courtroom, extending to every last dark corner. Things like rats and mice scurried out of the corners, disturbed from their sleep by her cry.
The horned man relaxed in his throne, looking content.
“But you already know the answer to that,” he said, his eyes like dark pools. “You don’t have a brother. You never did.”
He laughed, and the court joined him. It was an ugly sound that rippled through the air. But she stood her ground.
“I want to know what happened to him,” Red repeated. “I entered your agreement believing that child was my brother. So I don’t care what you say. It still stands. He belongs with me, and I love him. That makes him my brother, even if not by blood.”
She trembled visibly, waiting for some terrible wrath to be unleashed. Curiously, there was none. The horned king put his head on one side and studied her.
“You really want to know what happened to the child?”
“Yes,” she croaked, aware that she was still holding the Book. The Book of Knowledge that would answer any question…
“Bring forth the child!” the horned king roared.
At the rear of the court a commotion broke out. Red turned to see two huge wooden doors that lay beyond the twisting staircase opening, and then three fairy guards stepped through, hauling a fey family with them. Red held her breath as they approached, herded like cattle to the front of the courtroom. The fairy woman was sobbing bitterly, and in her arms was a small, golden-haired child who was clinging to her in terror, his face buried in the woman’s neck.
The man had his arm around her shoulders in an attempt to give some comfort—but Red could see his own eyes were brimming with tears as well. As they drew closer, stopping a short way from her before the throne, they were close enough for Red to see that the child did not share the characteristic pointed ears of the fairy couple. They were rounded, human… but as the woman reluctantly put the child down, Red’s heart sank as he turned.
“James?” she whispered.
The child regarded her—but with curiosity, nothing more. No recognition or love lit up his face. And Red saw that this child was far older than her brother, closer to six rather than the three James would be now. A mixture of emotions raged inside her: disappointment, and anger and resentment that the fairies thought they could deceive her with an impostor. But then she saw something that sent those feelings crashing down in ruins. On the child’s cheek, a birthmark the color of a tea stain and the shape of a fish… proof beyond proof that this was James.
“Take him,” the horned king said, smiling widely. “He’s yours.”
“No!” the fairy woman sobbed, dropping to her knees and pulling the child to her. She turned her face to Red’s, her anguish raw. “Please, don’t take him away from us, I beg you!”
“We love him,” the fairy father said hoarsely. “He’s our son… our second son—our first son died! Please, he’s our only happiness….”
Red swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat. So James had not been taken for mischief, or pain, but to replace a child who was loved and lost.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it. “But he was my happiness before he was yours.” She averted her eyes from the fairy couple and knelt before James.
Turning to the throne she met with the triumphant gaze once more.
“He’s older,” she said. “Make him the way he was.”
The horned king spread out his hands in a gesture of innocence.
“Time passes, and differently here. I cannot undo what is impossible. I cannot unmake the time that has passed.”
“You can do something,” said Red fiercely. “You can make a glamour that makes him look younger—I can’t take him back like this! That’s not the way it works in my world!”
“As you wish.” The horned king bowed. “When you leave the realm, it shall be done.” He nodded to the back of the court, and once again, the doors at the rear opened. This time, a lone prisoner was brought forward in chains, shoved spitefully to his knees once he was level with Red. Warwick looked up at her—and in that one glance Red knew that he had never expected to see her again.
Grunting, the guard removed the chains and retreated, leaving Warwick on the floor. He looked thinner but otherwise unharmed.
“You’re free to go,” the horned man told them pleasantly.
The fairy woman continued to sob into her husband’s shoulder.
Red leaned toward the child. Gently, she reached out and brushed her fingers over the birthmark. Then, reaching down, she took his hand in hers.
“Come on, James. It’s time to go home.”
The child snatched his hand back at once, shaking his head and burying himself against the woman he believed to be his mother. His blond curls bobbed around his head with the movement, and the fairy mother cried harder.
“James, come on,” Red pleaded. “Don’t make this any harder for me….” She put her arm around the child and tried to pull him away.
“NO!” he screamed, kicking out at her. “I don’t want to go with you!”
“Well, you’re coming,” said Red. She lifted the child up, despite his struggles. Her eyes were blurring with tears at his words. “You don’t belong here, James!”
“I’m not James!” The child sobbed, collapsing against her in exhaustion. “That’s not my name! I don’t want to go with you, I don’t know you! I want my mother!”
Red was crying too now, openly. For finally she knew that, despite everything, it really was too late. James did not remember her. If she took him now, all he would remember was being torn from a family he loved by a stranger he didn’t know and didn’t want. It was the crueler choice. The selfish choice. And she knew she couldn’t go through with it.
She sank to her knees, releasing the child, who ran to his mother and was swept up in her arms. The fairy mother stared at her through tears of grief and confusion.
“I can’t,” Red said, beaten. “I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” the horned king demanded, jumping to his feet. “This is what you wanted, so take him!”
Red looked into his cruel, arrogant face and saw the truth: this was not what he’d wanted. He’d wanted the chaos, and the upset.
“I won’t take him,” she said. And suddenly, an image of Rose came to mind, and the way she had spoken of doing what she thought best. Now Red understood. It was called sacrifice. “I can’t, because I love him too much.” She braced herself for jeers from the court, but only silence met her ears.
“Then how about a compromise?” the horned king suggested slyly.
“What kind of compromise?”
“The kind where you stay here, with us… as one of us. After all, you know what you really are now, don’t you?”
“You’re talking about my real father. Aren’t you?” she said. “That he was fey.”
Another flash of those sharp little teeth.
“Indeed.”
She saw Warwick look up at her in bewilderment, and nodded very slightly to inform him that what had been said was true.
“You can even visit the child,” the smooth voice continued. “There. He’ll have the best of both worlds, and you will finally have somewhere to belong.”
His words stung her to the core, reaching the part of her she’d fought to keep hidden. She had been about to tell him how absurd the idea of her staying in the fairy realm was until he had spoken those last words. For they were true. She had always felt like an outsider, but now she really did belong nowhere and with no one.
“What is there to go back to?” the horned king coaxed. “Except more trouble?”
“Don’t listen to him, Red.” Warwick stood up, his jaw squared. “Don’t listen to a word they say. It’s all a game, just words.”
“But it’s true,” Red said, her voice as broken as her spirit. “What is there for me to go back to? Nothing. Nothing but trouble. And if I’m half fey, then maybe I should stay… maybe I could belong.”
Warwick grabbed her and shook her.
“Listen to me! That’s what they want you to think! They want you to give up, and think like them, and be like them! And maybe you are half fey, but you’re half human too. And that half has a heart, and a place back in our world, not in this twisted one. There is somewhere you belong—with us. At Elvesden Manor! We want you there.” He released her shoulders suddenly, aware that perhaps he had said too much. “Only you can choose, Red. You must decide what you want.”
“But what will I say if I do go back?” Tears streamed down Red’s face. “I’ve done things, things that can’t easily be put right.”
“Running away isn’t going to make them right,” said Warwick sadly. “And some things aren’t easily repaired, but it doesn’t make them impossible.”
“But they are!” Red cried. “I don’t see a way to fix things!”
“There’s always a way,” Warwick answered.
Red stared back at him, looking from his kind eyes to the horned king’s dark, emotionless ones. She thought of Tanya, Fabian, Warwick—and even Nell—and how they had gone out of their way to help her. And she thought of Rose again—so alone, and desperate to make it up to the daughter she had lost. There were still choices to be made and things to put right. But none of them were here. She felt it in her heart.
“I choose to leave,” she said.
“I don’t think you mean that,” the horned king said, settling back into his relaxed place on the throne.
“Yes, I do. I do mean it.”
At the forefront of the crowd, two figures emerged and watched from afar: Raven and Gredin. They nodded, encouraging her to go on.
“I don’t think you do,” the horned king repeated. “You don’t know your own mind, or yourself. You don’t even know who you are.”
The fire of Red’s anger started to go out, clinging only now to the tiniest embers of hope. The horned king glowed, feeding off her sapped hope and strength, drawing power from her weakness. She replayed the words in her mind, over and over until only one thing remained, the one thing that was true.
“I know enough,” she said. “Because I know that my name is Rowan.”
A collective gasp went up around her, including Warwick. The horned king’s smug expression fell.
“Red, what are you doing?” Warwick hissed. “You can’t give them your…” He trailed off as he saw the triumphant light in her eyes.
“It was the name given to me by my mother,” she continued, her strength flooding back. It all made sense… what Rose had been trying to tell her. The Hedgewitch, and Snatcher… everything finally fell into place.
“The name I’ve been called all my life, except since my brother has been missing I denied it, kept it secret and hidden. But even then, it protected me—protected me from harm. I defeated your Hedgewitch, even if I didn’t understand how at the time—but now I do. I defeated her because she tried to harm me, but she couldn’t because of my name and what it means. And she paid the price because of it. I’m Rowan… and you have no power over me!” She shouted the last words at the horned king, who sat glowering on his throne. He could do nothing—for he knew as well as she did that she spoke the truth.
“You can’t touch me,” said Rowan. “All you could do was crumble what was around me—my lie of a life. But now I know the truth, and I accept it. I’m going back, and I’ll face up to the things I’ve done, no matter what happens. Because I’d rather be there than here with you!”
She turned to James and his fairy parents, taking one long, last look at the little golden-haired boy.
“Take good care of him,” she told them. “I know you will.” She reached out and tousled the boy’s hair. “Good-bye,” she whispered under her breath. “Good-bye, James.”
Fresh tears leaked from the fey woman’s eyes as she hugged her son to her.
“Someday,” the woman said, “we’ll repay you for your kindness, in a time of need—”
Rowan shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything. Just… look after him.” She began to walk away, with Warwick at her side. Then suddenly, she turned back. “Wait,” she called to the fairy parents, who were hugging and sobbing.
They looked up, their expressions fearful, and she knew they thought she had changed her mind. Hurriedly she took off her bag and searched inside until she found what she was looking for. Pulling it out, she offered it to them.
“There is something you can do,” she said, holding the book of fairy tales. “This was our mother’s.” She ran her fingers over the rough fabric of the cover, touched the smooth gilt edges of the pages for the final time. “Perhaps… perhaps you could read it to him, from time to time.”
The fairy mother accepted it, smiling through her tears, and then Rowan and Warwick vanished into the crowd of fairies, which was now bubbling with excitement and anger. The horned king remained on his throne, his face shrouded in fury at his defeat, but powerless to stop them.
As they ascended the stairs, the guards parted warily to let them pass.
Halfway up, Rowan reached out and took Warwick’s hand.
“Stitch?” she whispered, not daring to say his real name aloud. “I’m scared. What’s going to happen to me when we get back? How do I make things right? What do I say?”
Warwick squeezed her hand as they continued to climb. The entrance to the hilltop was almost upon them.
“You just tell the truth,” he said, staring straight ahead. “That’s all. You tell them that you missed your brother, and that you wanted him back, but no matter what you did, no matter which children you took, nothing could replace him. Because that is the truth, isn’t it?”
Cool air washed over their faces as the hillside rolled back to allow them to pass. They ran the final few steps, leaping free of the staircase and jumping onto the boggy grass, saturated with rain. Fat drops fell from the sky, soaking them in seconds, and as the hillside closed behind them, a terrible roar of anger erupted from the horned king. It was cut off as the entrance sealed itself once more, breaking the connection between the two worlds.
Or perhaps, not quite.
A low rumble began in the distance, rolling over the hills and vales surrounding the Tor. As they started on the stone path on the way down, Warwick turned to her and grinned.
“I think there’s a storm coming,” he said.