Seventeen
WHEN ASTER and I returned to Gadfly’s stair, the throne room had transformed. Spider-silk garlands looped between the branches, their dew sparkling in the moonlight. Night-blooming flowers shivered on every bough, aglow with fairy lights flickering within them like votives. They bathed the clearing in an ethereal glow in which nothing seemed quite real. Not the tables laden with wine, sweets, and fruits, or the musical flocks of songbirds that swooped low before darting back into the canopy. And certainly not the fair folk, who had stepped straight out of a storybook. Moonlight shimmered on the jewels in their hair and set cold fire to the silver embroidery on their coats and dresses. They danced in pairs without music, a strange, silent waltz furling and unfolding across the clearing below, vignettes glimpsed through eyeholes in my mask. And all of them as faceless as I was: birds and flowers, foxes and deer, their smiles sharper than candlelight striking the curve of crystal glasses.
Everyone was dressed in the pale colors of the spring court, aside from me—and Rook. I picked him out immediately where he stood at the foot of the stair beside Gadfly. Tonight he looked every inch the autumn prince in a sweeping wine-colored coat trimmed with thread-of-gold. His crown winked from his tousled curls, and a raven mask covered the upper half of his face. Reading his easy manner, his smile and the relaxed set of his shoulders, and noting that his hand didn’t stray near his sword, it struck me with grim horror that he did not know; Gadfly had not told him. I was in love with him, and he didn’t know.
The realization weighted my feet like shackles. Each step required an effort, even with Aster’s hand supporting my elbow.
No one noticed us until we were halfway down. Then the entire ball stilled. A hush fell over the clearing. Everyone watched, expectant. I halted, trying to muster the courage to continue. Was this how Rook felt? Always on guard, always trying to hide any sign of weakness that could have the fair folk leaping at his throat in seconds? Without the mask, I would be doomed.
A rose petal tumbled down the step next to my feet, followed by another. Barely suppressing a flinch, I looked over my shoulder to see where they were coming from. Rose petals were strewn in a path behind me all the way up the steps, scarlet against the white woven birch, but I saw no one responsible for their presence.
“The dress is enchanted,” Aster whispered, leaning in. “Petals will appear wherever you step. But they aren’t real—watch.”
A breeze blew, scattering the petals, which vanished like shadows as they stirred. The sight was captivating, and awful. My path through the masquerade would be marked like a wounded animal leaving bloodstains on snow. An appropriate comparison, all things considered.
I forced myself to continue. Finally, well concealed beneath the gown’s loose, flowing hem, my boots touched the ground. Gadfly took my hand and kissed it while, next to him, Rook studiously tried not to react. For the first time I was grateful for his ignorance. If he’d known, he would have drawn his sword against Gadfly then and there, and it would all have been over before we’d had a chance.
“What a delight it is to have our very first masquerade with a mortal in attendance,” Gadfly said. His swan mask’s snowy feathers covered almost his entire face, leaving only slivers of his jawline visible, but I heard the smile in his voice. “And what an intriguing dress Aster has chosen for you. Why, you and Rook make quite the matching pair! Of course, it would be a shame if he kept you all to himself this evening. I must insist on having the first dance.”
My stomach swooped with vertigo, as though I were still descending and had just missed the stair’s final step. I forced a smile over clenched teeth. Gadfly kept talking, but I didn’t hear a word, hoping my polite nods would suffice. Rook shifted impatiently. With so many eyes upon us, I despaired of the chance of speaking to him alone.
Perhaps there was a way to warn him before Gadfly swept me away. Briefly, I pressed my eyes closed. I conjured up the sensation of cold, clawlike hands wrapped around my throat, squeezing, suffocating the life from my body. Dizziness. Terror. Death. Throughout it all, I didn’t let the smile fall from my face. Hopefully it only looked to Gadfly as though I’d modestly lowered my eyes at one of his flowery compliments. More likely it looked as though I had indigestion.
When I looked up, I found Rook scrutinizing me. He’d felt it. Framed by the mask’s dark feathers, his eyes pierced me with shock and concern. I watched his expression change. First confusion, seeing there was nothing wrong with me, followed by dawning understanding. He ran his hands down the front of his coat, assuring everyone he’d only gotten a peculiar look on his face because he was worried he’d forgotten something. He patted at his sword belt and checked his sword. No, he hadn’t forgotten his sword after all. There it was! Beaming, he adjusted the lay of the sheath against his leg. God, he was a terrible actor—what did I expect from someone who couldn’t lie?—but his meaning was clear. Message received. He would be on his guard.
“. . . and that’s how I ended up with the entire wagon of turnips, and Mr. Thoresby was forced to return my second-best waistcoat. But enough carrying on,” Gadfly was saying, quite oblivious, or at least pretending to be, as he admired one of his own cuff links. “I could talk about myself forever, couldn’t I? Let’s take a turn. The night isn’t getting any younger, after all, and it appears everyone is waiting on us.”
As though I were extending my neck to the guillotine, I held out my hand. I had no other choice. He gallantly took my arm and escorted me to the center of the glade. The other fair folk stood at a respectful distance, having paused the waltz in preparation for their prince’s entrance. He placed his free hand on my waist, and at last I had to lower the mask to rest my own on his shoulder. Skillfully, he swept me into the ebb and flow of movement as everyone resumed dancing together. The courtiers flowed around us with inhuman grace, whispers of muslin and silk in passing, but aside from that—silence.
“You look very fine this evening, Gadfly,” I said without feeling.
“Yes, I know,” he replied. “Yet I can’t deny it’s wonderful to hear my suspicions confirmed.”
Within the holes of his swan mask, laugh lines appeared around his eyes, which I had never seen at home in my parlor. Perhaps they hadn’t existed before now: an artful deception, like that single strand of hair he’d allowed to escape from his ribbon on the fateful day I’d learned of Rook’s commission, or spending years as my patron without ever letting slip to anyone that he was the spring prince. His mask was tied with a pale blue ribbon, so that he could watch my face while I saw nothing of his.
“I hear you and Aster spoke of the Green Well,” he went on.
Mouth dry, stomach in knots, I scrambled for a way to draw things out, to maintain my innocence of my fate, to deny Aster’s involvement.
“You needn’t lie to me, Isobel. I have a rather unique gift, even among my kind. But you already know that, don’t you?”
And that was that. There was no use pretending any longer. “Lark told me,” I said, the whispery rhythm of the waltz receding as blood roared in my ears.
“Just so. None of this was set in stone, of course. The future never is. It’s like a forest, you see, with thousands upon thousands of paths running through it, all branching off in different directions. Some things can change, up until the very end. Yesterday I wasn’t certain whether we would do this version, or the version in which you chose not to tell Rook your true name and returned home none the worse for wear, and then due to the fact that I was dancing elsewhere with Nettle, instead of here, with you, a passing nightingale spoiled my lapel as it relieved itself overhead. Which is why I wore my least favorite suit and still ordered the lemon creams specially, just in case.” He gave a rueful sigh. “Alas. We’ll never get to eat the lemon creams now. But at least Swallowtail will have ruined that offensive yellow jacket of his.”
A bird trilled sweetly across the clearing. Somewhere among the dancers, a young man gave a shout of consternation.
“How long have you known?” My voice throbbed with terror and rage, snarled together in a choking tangle. “How long have you been waiting for this?”
He favored me with a look. You can do better than that, the look said. “I haven’t been waiting at all. I have traveled with you the entire way, lighting your path, ensuring that you selected the one necessary fork in the road out of hundreds. In retrospect do you not find it peculiar that I was your first patron, or that Rook came to you to have his portrait done after so many centuries in hiding?”
“You utter bastard,” we both said together, Gadfly speaking over me in cool counterpoint. He shook his head, disappointed but unsurprised, and said: “That one was a given.”
I thought I might be sick.
Clumsily, like someone reaching out in a dark room, a warm rush of assurance bumped against me. It felt unmistakably of Rook. He was testing the bond between us, aware something was wrong and doing his best to comfort me. He didn’t know, I thought. He didn’t know I’d condemned him to death. Soon, I’d have to tell him. I swallowed, pushing his presence away as best I could, and before the sensation vanished I received one last pang of unhappy surprise from him, as though I’d slammed a door in his face without warning.
“You are empty,” I said, my throat working, “and cruel.”
“Ah. Yes, now that is true. Would you like to know the greatest secret of fairykind?” When I didn’t answer he continued, “We prefer to pretend otherwise, but truly, we have never been the immortal ones. We may live long enough to see the world change, but we’re never the ones who changed it. When we finally reach the end, we are unloved and alone, and leave nothing behind, not even our name chiseled on a stone slab. And yet—mortals, through their works, their Craft, are remembered forever.” He turned us gracefully through the crowd without missing a step. “Oh, you cannot imagine the power your kind holds over us. How very much we envy you. There is more life in your littlest fingernail than in everyone in my court combined.”
Was that truly all it was? Was that the reason why fair folk condemned mortal emotion—because those few of them who felt it only served to remind the rest of what they couldn’t have? And thus love, the experience they envied most bitterly, became the deadliest offense of all.
“That’s why you’ve done this?” I whispered. “Jealousy?”
“I am wounded by your low opinion of me, Isobel,” Gadfly replied, not sounding wounded at all, and in fact sounding as though he cared so little about others’ opinions he might not even recognize what they were upon their delivery to him. “No, I am playing a longer game, a little deeper in the forest, farther along the path. And now I won’t keep you any longer. Time runs short, and I’m certain you’d rather be dancing with Rook.”
He wove us around the other dancers, steering us toward where Rook stood out like a sore thumb, unwillingly requisitioned into a dance with Foxglove. Gadfly maintained an expectant air, but I had nothing left to say to him.
“Fear not,” he said to my silence. “This business will be unpleasant while it lasts, but it will be over soon enough.” As his silk glove slipped from my shoulder, he brought his mask close to my ear. “Remember: for all my meddling, your choice is the one that matters in the end. Hello, Foxglove! Rook! May I steal this dance?”
Rose petals swept around us as we switched partners, disappearing with a ghost of heady fragrance. If I survived this, I thought, I’d never want to smell roses again.
“I felt—” Rook began, but I cut him off with a sharp jerk of my head. I meant to wait until Gadfly and Foxglove had moved away from us to speak. Yet I found, as the seconds passed, that I couldn’t say the words. I didn’t know how to say them. They were too vast and terrible to fit on my tongue.
Around and around we swirled. Lights glittered across Rook’s hair and the gold thread on his coat. Courtiers flowed past us, whirling but never touching, like flowers spinning on the surface of a lake. A wolf mask turned to stare at me as it passed; I felt countless eyes upon us, waiting for the first sign of the hunt’s climax. Two prey, one alert, the other unsuspecting, about to be flushed from a thicket toward a bloody end.
“Isobel? What is it?”
“I must ask you to do something for me,” I said.
He replied quickly, “Anything.”
I forced myself not to look away. “You must use the ensorcellment to change what I feel.”
Rook almost missed a step. “What are you saying?”
Nearby Foxglove tilted her head back, her silvery laugh splitting the masquerade.
“I’m saying that I—”
“No. Don’t.” He looked at me as though he were marooned and I were a ship he was watching sail out to sea, farther and farther away.
A sickly odor of decay reached my nose.
“Rook, I’m sorry,” I said. “I love you.”
Our next turn brought the tables into view. A fair one lifted a pear to her lips, only for the fruit to blacken in her hand, oozing through her fingers, swollen with maggots. She ate it anyway, wearing an expression of sweet delight as juice and pulp dripped down her chin. On all the platters, the fruit had turned rotten. Dark putrefaction spilled over the china, soaked the tablecloths, and dribbled to the ground.
“When?” he asked, his lips barely moving. The lower half of his face was masklike itself, ashen against his dark curls and high collar.
A songbird dove down, tearing a butterfly apart in its beak. Whirling in circles, the revelers grew sallow and feverish in the fairy lights’ multicolored glow. Animal masks snarled. Flower masks boggled at us, inscrutable. They spun dizzily and with delirious abandon, no longer playing at being human, parodying a mortal ball like a nightmare masquerade.
“Yesterday. But I didn’t know until . . .” I couldn’t bear to speak of it. “Please. We’re almost out of time.”
“I can’t do it,” he said.
A raven croaked overhead.
“You have to!”
He released my waist to pull on the trailing end of the ribbon holding his mask in place. It tumbled to the ground, lost among the dancers. “I gave my word,” he said, stripped bare.
We took one step forward. Another back. Turned. I tasted the words like poisoned wine. “Then it’s over.”
“Isobel,” Rook said. He stopped moving, so that we alone stood still. “I have never met anyone more frustrating, or brave, or beautiful. I love you.”
A sob caught in my throat. Standing on my toes, I closed the gap between us and kissed him; I kissed him fiercely, bruisingly, as a cacophony of mocking wails and scandalized shrieks rose from the fair folk looking on. This was what they had been waiting for.
A whisper of sound. Suddenly we stood alone, as though the courtiers had vanished like specters into the night. But no—they were still there—I caught the grotesque shapes of masks peering out at us from the bushes, from the trees, from every shadow, their hidden owners crouching in stiff anticipation like mantises waiting to strike.
And we weren’t completely alone. A slender, white-haired figure clad in black armor stood at one of the tables. Her back faced us. I hadn’t seen her arrive; perhaps she’d already been standing there for some time. She picked up a spoiled pastry, examined it, and flung it away in disgust.
A horn blast echoed through the forest. I felt it in the ground, reverberating up through my bones. Two other blasts answered its call, but those deep bellows did not belong to horns. In the misty darkness between the trees, a pair of towering shapes moved. They were so tall, crowned with branches, that I might have mistaken them for giant oaks had they not shifted, revealing themselves as massive thanes, both at least half again as large as the one Rook slew the day we’d met. Hounds leapt out of the woods as though fleeing from them, pale flames in the night, to boil sinuously around Hemlock’s legs, overturning the table as they vied for her affection, utterly ignored. Steam rose from their lolling scarlet tongues.
The horn sounded again. Only then did she turn.
With the movement, it was as though she pulled a dustcloth from the throne room. The air rippled, and the birches grayed and sagged, bark peeling, riddled with beetle holes. The moss underfoot atrophied to an unhealthy yellow-green, and flowers shriveled in the damp heat that rose from the earth, rank with the stench of decomposing vegetation. The summer court’s corruption had reached the springlands—or it had been here all along.
“I am here to enforce the Good Law!” Hemlock cried in a clear voice. What she said next made the trees groan and whisper and all the waiting ravens take flight in a nervous, silent cloud. “By the order of our sovereign, the Alder King.”