Eighteen
HEMLOCK HALTED only a few paces away, her open hands held out to the sides as though to show us she didn’t have a weapon, or as if she were prepared to embrace us. Given the wicked claws on the ends of her long, knotted fingers, I didn’t try to guess which.
Rook eyed her up and down, and in one smooth, contemptuous motion drew his sword. He angled his body in front of me. I seized the chance to bend and work the ring out of my stocking, and slipped it on while he spoke. “How long have you been the Alder King’s servant, Hemlock?” he spat. “I was unaware the winter court had fallen so low. Bending the knee on ceremony is one thing. Carrying out orders on his behalf is quite another.”
Even with Rook between us, Hemlock’s unsettling, luminously green gaze fixed on my face. “Do try to be more polite, Rook,” she said. “Have a look around. Myself, Gadfly, even the winter prince—none of us do what we like now.” A smile twitched across her features. “I did tell both of you silly fools to run. I told you I’d be after you.”
Rook’s sword sang through the air. It moved so swiftly I didn’t see it strike, or see Hemlock raise her arm to block it. They stood locked together, the blade lodged in her armor, Rook’s coat billowing around him as the wind settled. Her smile hardened. She dug her heels in, and her arm shook with the effort of holding him at bay. But Rook and I were outnumbered. We knew it, and so did she.
She crooked one finger, beckoning the courtiers forward. “Make yourselves useful, please, and seize them. Do wipe your faces first.”
The fair folk swarmed from the forest. Before I could react, they tore me away from Rook. Dozens of hands grasped my clothes, my arms, my hair, sticky from their feasting on putrid fruit. They jerked me this way and that, as though pretending to dance with me—leering faces spun around me like a carousel. I lashed out with my ring, and someone gave a bloodcurdling scream.
“She has iron on her finger!” the fair one exclaimed. The voice was familiar—Foxglove. “Take it from her! Take the whole hand if you must!”
An arm struck me across the back, slamming me to the ground. Gulping air in hoarse gasps, I pulled my arm underneath me and lifted my chin just enough to see that Rook had been overpowered too. Gadfly stood behind him with his elbow wrapped around Rook’s throat and his other hand squeezing Rook’s wrist, which no longer held a sword. Mask gone, he looked calm and amused as Rook thrashed with bared teeth in his grip. Their height difference was such that Rook was bent backward, unable to find footing, while Hemlock’s hounds snapped at his kicking boots.
We had scored only two small victories. A chunk of bark armor hung loose from Hemlock’s forearm where she stood aside, nursing it. Sap dripped down, sharp with the smell of winter pine; the bark was already growing back over the wound. And Foxglove sat on the ground across from me, holding a hand to her cheek. An angry weal stood out on it where I’d struck her, already melting away to flawless skin behind the furiously trembling cage of her fingers.
I knew her command had been serious and the fair folk wouldn’t hesitate to follow it through. I tugged the ring off and flung it away, past the pool of rose petals spreading around me like a bloodstain. The iron wouldn’t do me any good now.
“You wicked, nasty creature,” Foxglove hissed, yanking me to my feet. I hadn’t seen her get up. I stifled a cry as she wrenched one of my arms out of its socket—tingling, lightning-bright sparks of pain shot through my shoulder, numbing me to every other sensation. I tripped forward, pushed from behind, barely managing to stay upright. The circlet hung askew on my head.
“No,” Aster’s wispy voice said nearby. “Don’t hurt her—don’t hurt them more than you have to, please—” Her touch alit on my arm before someone swatted it away.
“I’ll reach down her throat and tear her heart out if I so choose,” Foxglove snapped. “What is wrong with you, Aster? You would seek mercy for those who have broken the Good Law? This human wielded iron against me.”
Aster’s answer seemed to come from afar this time. “I’m sorry . . .”
“And stop looking at her like that,” Foxglove added, vehemently. I thought she was still addressing Aster until she went on, “How disgusting. Have some dignity, and die like one of your own kind.”
I raised my head to find Rook watching me, his agonized affections written plainly on his face. Some fair folk stared in revolted fascination. Others cringed away, unable to bear the sight. But Gadfly looked down at him, and then over at me, with a subtle, almost regretful smile shading the edges of his mouth. I was reminded of his many portraits, a hundred versions shifting in the firefly glow.
“Foxglove, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, let us not begin tearing hearts out quite yet,” he said. “Now that our masquerade has been cut so tragically short, I find myself unprepared for the evening’s diversions to end.” He sent a quelling look at Hemlock, who had started forward. “Oh, I insist. This is still my court, after all, isn’t it? Well, then—that’s settled. First, we shall take them to the Green Well. And we will give Isobel one last chance to save the prince’s life, and undo all the harm she has inflicted.”
The clamor that followed drowned out my scream. I slumped in Foxglove’s grasp, stars bursting across my vision.
“Now, everyone,” Gadfly said. “It’s only fair. And I promise it will be a memorable spectacle.” As Rook twisted against him, shouting incoherently with fury, he gave a cheerful wink.
The fairy host drove us forward, across the glade, through thickets and meadows, past the riven stone and the bluebells. The moonlight frosted everything like a dream. My head hung, but from time to time I caught glimpses of the thanes keeping pace with us on either side, colossal shadows striding through the wood, terrible in their immense and silent majesty. Hounds leapt among the fair folk like nobles’ dogs in a hunting party. And of course, Rook and I were the game. Perhaps it was fitting that the place where Rook had confessed his love to me would be the place where we died.
When we reached the Green Well it was just as I remembered it, even in the dark. The squat circle of mossy stones filled me with the same lurching horror as before, but Foxglove propelled me inexorably forward when my body stiffened and my steps shortened into halting, balking scuffles. She didn’t stop until the tips of my boots stubbed against the rocks. She tore the circlet from me while I writhed in her grip, and thrust my shoulders forward over the edge. Freed from its braids, my hair fell loose over the well’s shadows.
Gadfly brought Rook up short across from me on the other side. It was grimly satisfying to see that Rook had clipped his nose at some point on the short journey over. Blood smeared his mouth, and ferns and flowers sprouted around him where some of it had dripped to the ground.
“Isobel—” Rook began.
Hemlock stalked into view, kicking aside the overgrowth as it spread. She drove an elbow into Rook’s gut, and he doubled over, silenced. A few fair folk jeered. That was when I knew our death would be many things, but it wouldn’t be swift.
Swallowtail came forward with a winning smile. He stole Rook’s crown, placed it on his own head, and strutted around pretending to swing a shuttlecock racket as everyone laughed. Emboldened, another fair one approached, seized the lapel of Rook’s coat, and ripped the garment half off him. The raven pin went spinning into the flowers. Rook staggered. Then he lunged at the offender, only to go sprawling when Gadfly lifted a foot and neatly swiped his legs out from under him.
A sob caught in my throat. Rook climbed back to his feet, his clothes torn and his chest heaving. I never could have imagined him so humiliated.
“Do what you will with me,” he said, “but don’t make her watch. Let her go.”
Gadfly sighed. With a fatherly hand, he brushed twigs and leaves from Rook’s hair. Rook didn’t react. His head was lowered, hiding his face. I ached with the knowledge that if anything like trust existed between fair folk, he had felt it toward Gadfly.
“It takes two to violate this particular tenet of the Good Law, I’m afraid,” Gadfly said.
“She is ensorcelled.”
“Ah, but her will remains her own. It seems you love her so much that you’ve resisted enthralling her.” This time, no one jeered. The whispers sounded unsettled, confused. “And in any case, as both you and I know, the breach of the Good Law occurred beforehand.”
“Do hurry up, Gadfly.” Hemlock’s smile looked pasted on. “I hate to keep the king waiting.”
“Then kill me!” Rook snarled, twisting around to face Gadfly. “We can hardly break the Good Law if one of us is dead. What is a mortal’s life to the Alder King? She will have returned home, married, borne children, perished, and turned to dust before he takes his next breath. She is noth—” He drew up short with a painful gasp, caught in a lie. “She is nothing to him,” he said instead, anguish wracking his words. “Kill me and be done with it!”
“Rook, stop!” I shouted. I might as well have been a bird twittering for all the attention the other fair folk paid me. Only Rook reacted, flinching as though I’d struck him.
“I suppose we could do that.” Gadfly paused. “But it wouldn’t be fun at all, would it? And it isn’t as though we aren’t giving Isobel a choice in the matter.”
Unceremoniously, he released Rook, who had been leaning so heavily against Gadfly’s restraint that he fell, catching himself on his hands and knees. He threw one arm over the edge of the well and pulled himself up to meet my eyes, panting, though I could tell he wanted to look away; it took everything he had to look at me.
“I was not strong enough to protect you,” he said, at a volume pitched to me alone.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”
We looked desperately into each other’s eyes. It wasn’t.
“Now, I apologize for spoiling the moment, but Hemlock has a point—we’re dallying. So.” Gadfly pulled his gloves off, one after the other, and slipped them into his pocket. “Isobel, Rook is quite correct about one thing: the two of you only violate the Good Law in the state you’re in presently. That is, both alive, a mortal and a fair one, and in love. Ah,” he said at my expression. “Yes, if either of you could stop loving the other, we would have to release you. Go on, give it a try if you like.”
All these years, how hadn’t I realized what a monster Gadfly was? But god, I had to at least make the attempt. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard lights exploded across the insides of my eyelids. I thought of Rook stealing me away in the dead of night; his arrogance; his tantrums; how foolish I was for loving him. I imagined Emma tucking March and May into bed alone. Yet my traitorous heart wouldn’t surrender. I could no more change my feelings than I could command the sky to rain or demand that the sun rise at the stroke of midnight.
I released the breath trapped in my chest with a sound that was half a gasp, half a scream. Gadfly knew. Damn him, he knew that for me, not being able to rein in my own heart was the greatest torment of all.
“But there’s another way.” His mild voice insinuated itself into the following quiet. “It is not a crime for two fair folk to be in love.” Someone snickered. Love among fair folk—a grand joke indeed. “All you must do is drink of the Green Well, and you will save your own life, and Rook’s. The two of you can be together for eternity.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. Perhaps you’d let me live, but not Rook, not for long.”
“Oh . . . I’ve had a bit of wine, I’m in a generous mood.” I opened my eyes in time to see Gadfly nudge Rook with his boot. Rook seemed to have given up entirely; his forehead rested on the well’s stone edge. “He will have to have his power stripped from him, of course, remaining a prince is out of the question, but—I would see to it that he lives. No doubt a part of him wouldn’t want to, after that. He has always been proud. But he would do it for you.”
I was trembling so hard my hair shivered around me. “No,” I whispered.
“No? Truly? You value your mortality so highly that you would condemn not only yourself to death, but Rook as well? He has so many thousands of years left to him. And they say my kind is cold.”
My gaze fell on the raven pin, glinting among the bluebells. “I will never become like you,” I said. “Never.”
Gadfly smiled down at me sadly. “What of your family?”
I raised my head, trembling now with rage as well as fear. How dare he.
“Surely,” he went on, “it would be a comfort to your aunt Emma, and your little sisters March and May, if they could see you again. Just imagine how much you could help them as a fair one.”
“Do not speak of my family.”
“Ah, but I must. Are you truly willing to leave them with no final word of resolution, no body for them to bury? Your dear aunt is so alone. Your memory would haunt her forever. She would blame herself for everything that has happened. Believe me—I know.”
“You are deliberately tormenting me. Emma would never . . . she wouldn’t . . .”
She wouldn’t want me to make this choice. I slumped in Foxglove’s grip, gazing again at the cold sparkle of the raven pin on the ground, almost close enough to touch. Gadfly had planned every excruciating moment of this awful charade. He knew I would never drink of the Green Well, no matter what he said to me, and that my torture would be the utmost spectacle. He held my fate suspended like a magician’s caged dove, ready to collapse the bars upon me and crush me at any moment. And yet . . . and yet . . . the choice remained mine, and mine alone. Gadfly might see every path through the forest, every possible split in the trail—but what about the impossible? What if I left the path and charged blindly into the wild wood, to a place where none of his visions had ever led?
I thought I knew why Foxglove had torn the circlet from my braids. I hoped I was right, because I was about to take the biggest gamble of my life, and I wasn’t fond of surprises.
“I will drink,” I whispered. Foxglove’s fingers loosened on my wrists, whether to allow me to move or out of sheer shock, I didn’t care. I dropped to my knees and groped my way over the ground, fumbling clumsily in my pain and desperation, until I’d pushed an elbow over the well’s stone lip, scraping myself on the rough edge. I cried out softly as the touch jostled my dislocated shoulder. Gadfly watched me, utterly still, his eyes narrowed. How far had I already deviated from his path? Agreeing to drink was the last thing I would ever do. And of course, I wasn’t done yet.
I stretched my good hand down into the well, cupping my fingers. The water felt like any other water, but the mere awareness of what it was sent cold shocks racing through me, and my breath shivered in and out as I lifted the shimmering palmful, which reflected the moon in broken fragments. And then, abruptly, I stopped. My arm had simply . . . stuck. My fingers were pressed together tightly, but water still trickled away, the puddle at the center of my hand dwindling.
What if just touching the water was enough to begin a transformation after all?
Rook said my name.
I raised my fearful gaze and found him watching, tensed as if prepared to spring forward. I saw the anguish of his indecision. He did not want me to make this choice, knowing that for me it was worse than death. But he also didn’t want me to die. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t betray me in one way or another. In the same stroke, I understood what had happened to me.
“Release me,” I told him gently. “Trust me.”
Rook bowed his head. The ensorcellment’s paralysis faded. I clenched my teeth and raised the cupped water until my breath sent ripples shuddering across its surface.
Then I looked over it straight at Gadfly. I turned my hand, letting the water dribble back into the well. I raised my other arm high, though my shoulder screamed with agony, though I barely felt the metal object clenched within my fist, caked with dirt and grass.
In Gadfly’s own words, I was about to discover whether Craft had the power to undo the fair folk in a way I’d never imagined. Until now.
“Go to hell,” I told him, and hurled the raven pin into the Green Well.