One of the tall knights in shining silver armor—one with shoulder plates crafted to look like screaming faces picked out in shaped gold—approached them with a shallow bow and turned his gaze toward Hazel. “The Alderking would greet her.”
Jack’s elf mother nodded and cut a look at Jack. “He honors you,” she said, but her tone belied the words.
Hazel had heard stories of the Alderking, of course. Each solstice, townsfolk left special offerings out for him. When the weather was bad, they said he must be angry. When the seasons didn’t turn fast enough, they said he must still be asleep. She’d never quite imagined him as real. His power seemed great, and he seemed too distant for her to imagine him as anything but a legend.
“Lead on,” Hazel told the knight.
Jack made to come with her, but his mother grabbed his arm, twig fingers digging into his skin. Although she tried to hide it, there was genuine terror in her voice when she spoke. “Not you. You remain with me.”
He turned to her, head held high, and even in his human clothes managed to convey some of the haughtiness of his lineage. “Marcan here isn’t exactly known for his fair dealing with humans.” His gaze went to the knight. “Are you?”
“No one requested your presence, changeling.” The knight smirked. “Besides, Hazel doesn’t mind coming with me. We’ve crossed swords before.”
Hazel wasn’t sure what he meant. Maybe he’d had something to do with one of the creatures she’d fought when she was a child? Whatever it was, Jack looked ready to object. His hand slid into the back pocket of his jeans as if he was reaching for a weapon.
“It’s okay,” Hazel said. “Jack, it’s fine.”
Jack’s elf mother leaned her long body toward him, to press a kiss to Jack’s forehead. Hazel had never thought of her as longing for her lost son, never wondered if there was another side to the story of how Jack came to live with the Gordons, but she couldn’t help wondering then.
“Mortals will disappoint you,” she told him, almost a whisper against his skin.
Jaw set, fury in his eyes, Jack stepped back and allowed Marcan to lead Hazel across the earthen floor of the underhill.
The Alderking was seated on the great stone throne she’d glimpsed when she’d hung above the revel. Horns like those of a stag rose from a circlet at his brow, and he wore a shining coat of mail shaped from small bronze scales, each one tapering to a point, all of them overlapping like how she might have imagined the scales of a dragon to be. He had green eyes so clear and bright that they made you think of poisonous drinks or maybe mouthwash. On every finger of his hands, he wore a different, intricately shaped ring.
Across his lap was a golden sword with an ornate cross guard. For a moment she thought it was her own missing blade and took a half step toward it before realizing that her sword had a plainer hilt. All his knights wore similar swords—forged from bright metal, they gleamed like polished sunlight in their obsidian scabbards.
Resting at the Alderking’s feet was that pale and naked creature she had bargained with so long ago, the pale catlike one with crimson-tipped skin. It regarded her lazily, through half-lidded eyes. Then it waved a long-fingered hand, all claws.
Her careful questions about memories and monsters flew from her head. She went down on one knee. As she did, she saw something shimmer among the intricate tiles of the floor, like a dropped coin catching the light.
“Sir Hazel,” said the Alderking, leaning forward and peering down at her with those startling eyes. As handsome as any fairy-tale prince, he was beautiful and awful, all at once, despite the cruel twist of his mouth. “I do not remember commanding you to come here.”
Hazel looked up at him, baffled. “No, I—”
“In fact, I have explicitly told you never to come to a full-moon revel. And last night, though you were most grievously needed to hunt with us, you ignored my summons. Have you forgotten our bargain so quickly? Defy me to your peril, Hazel Evans. Have I not given you the deepest, dearest wish of your heart, an unasked-for boon? Have I not made you one of my company? Know that I could take it from you just as easily. There are far more unpleasant ways to serve me.”
“I—” Hazel opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Suddenly the Alderking began to laugh. “Ah,” he said, looking not unlike the faerie woman upon realizing she’d mistaken Hazel for her mother. “You’re not my Hazel, are you? Not my knight. You’re the Hazel Evans who lives by day.”
CHAPTER 14
Hazel thought that maybe she should stand, but she felt rooted in place. The party seemed to fade to a buzzing in her ears.
Sir Hazel, the Alderking had called her.
Jack’s elf mother had asked Hazel an odd thing, too. So have you come to pull him down off his white horse like in a ballad? Have you come to save him from us? Or is he here to save you? She knew the ballad where someone got pulled down off a white horse. It was Tam Lin, where a human knight was forced into the service of a queen of Faerie and saved by a brave mortal girl, Janet. Tam Lin was a human knight.
Hazel thought of the message in the walnut. Seven years to pay your debts. Much too late for regrets. And there was the odd thing the knight had said to her when he’d brought her over, that they’d crossed swords before.
Words deserted her.
“How…” she forced out anyway.
“You do not remember the bargain you made?” The Alderking leaned toward her, the horns on his circlet tipping forward.
“I promised you seven years of my life. There’s no way I could forget that.” Hazel took a deep breath. She was getting her nerve back. Pushing herself to her feet, heart pounding, she steeled herself for a battle of wits. Here, in some fashion, were the answers she needed. She just had to ask the right questions in the right way. “But—you’re saying I’ve been paying my debt to you? I don’t remember—I don’t remember doing so.”
He smiled patiently. “Am I not generous to take those memories from you? Every night, from the moment you fall into slumber until your head touches your pillow again near dawn, you’re mine. You are my knight to command, and your own daylight life is unaffected. You always had potential—and I have guided that potential. I have made you into one of my number.”
Hazel was pretty sure that people who went without sleep for weeks died. Years was ridiculous. And it was equally incredible to think that she’d been trained by the knights here under the hill—trained to be like them. She glanced to the three who stood to one side of the Alderking’s throne, looking as though they’d stepped out of paintings from a time that never was. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
“And yet,” the Alderking said, gesturing to the air as though that was all the explanation needed. Magic as both question and answer. “We came to your window and carried you through the air to our court, evening after evening. You are the knight you always dreamed of being.”
Breathe, Hazel told herself. Breathe.
She remembered the tiredness that had come over her in Philadelphia, a lassitude that had never quite left her. Now, at least, she knew where it had come from—not puberty, as her mother had believed. “I never dreamed of being your knight.”
“Indeed?” drawled the Alderking, as though he knew the truth of her heart better than she ever could. “I forbade you from telling your day self about our arrangement, but there is no small pleasure in seeing you so astonished.”
Hazel was speechless. She felt as though she didn’t know herself. As if she’d betrayed her own ideals in some vast and profound way, but she wasn’t yet sure how deep that betrayal went. She remembered her dream of riding beside other knights, of punishing humans with a grin on her face, and shuddered. Was that the person she’d become?
He laughed. “Well, Sir Hazel, if you haven’t come here as my knight, why have you come?”
She had to think fast. She had to push away thoughts of her other, untrustworthy self.
He must not know that she’d been the one to smash Severin’s coffin. Since she’d been awake all the night before, following Ben through the woods, her other self wouldn’t have shown up, couldn’t have been interrogated, couldn’t have revealed anything. And since the Alderking hadn’t wanted her to know about her night self, he wasn’t the mysterious Ainsel. Which meant her knight self might have an ally in his court, someone whom she was working with.
Hazel’s gaze went to the creature lying at the Alderking’s feet. This was the being to whom she’d rendered a promise, and while it had accepted her vow in the Alderking’s name, maybe it had power over her still.
“I came here because there’s a monster in Fairfold. I wanted to know how to slay it.”
His smile was cold as his hand went to lift a silver-chased goblet and bring it to his mouth. A few of his courtiers laughed. “Sorrow, she’s called. A great and fearsome creature, her skin hardened to bark tough enough to bend even faerie metal. You cannot slay her—and before you ask, the only antidote to the sleeping sickness she brings, to the moss that seeps into your veins at her touch, is her sap-like blood. So how about I make you another bargain, Hazel Evans?”
“What kind of bargain?” Hazel asked.
“The monster hunts for Severin. After all these long years, I discovered a means to control her. She obeys me now.” He raised his hand to show off a bone ring.
He spoke on, not noticing her grimace. “Bring me Severin, and I won’t use her might against Fairfold. I will even keep my people in check. Things will return to the way they once were.”
Hazel was so surprised she laughed. “Bring you Severin?” He might as well have asked for her to bring him the moon and the stars.
The Alderking didn’t look particularly amused. He looked impatient. “Yes, that’s the order I intended to give my Hazel, but last night passed without her arrival. That’s two nights you’ve cost me her service, counting this one. She is to hunt down the horned boy—my son, Severin—who’s escaped his confinement. She is to kill anyone he is in league with and drag him before me to face my wrath.”
Bring him Severin. His son. Her prince. A very real prince.
Am I actually capable of doing that? Hazel wondered. She was a little worried she was going to laugh again. It all seemed so impossible. “Why me?” she managed.
“I think it would be appropriate if it was a mortal who defeated him,” the Alderking said. “Your better self would know not to trifle with me, but in case you have some romantic idea of warning my son, let me explain why you ought not do that. You think I have done your people such grievous wrongs, but allow me to demonstrate what I could do without any effort at all.” He turned to one of his knights. “Bring me Lackthorn.”
A few moments later, a fierce-looking goblin with grayish skin and pointed ears came before the Alderking, holding a dirty hat in his hands.
“What pleasures do I allow you in town, Lackthorn?”
The goblin shrugged. “Only a few. I steal the cream and break some dishes. When a woman threw dirty water on me, I drowned her. Nothing more than you said I might do.”
Hazel was astonished at the casualness with which he listed awful things. But no one else seemed surprised. The Alderking was looking down on him as though these were normal faerie caprices. Maybe to him, they were. “You didn’t always let them go so far, though, did you?”
“I have allowed more leeway as I have come to see what a blight you mortals are. But attend closely. Lackthorn, if I gave you leave to do what you’d like, what would you have done?” The Alderking cut a glance at Hazel.
“What would I have done?” The little goblin laughed in such a gluttonous, awful way that the sound shivered up Hazel’s spine. “I’d set fires and burn up their houses with them inside. I’d pinch and pinch them until they ached to their very bones. I’d curse them so they’d pine away, then I’d gnaw on what was left. What would I do if you gave me leave? What wouldn’t I do?”
“Did you know that the meat of the hazelnut was once thought to be the repository of all wisdom?” the Alderking said. “Be wise, Hazel. Lackthorn is one of the least dangerous of my troop. Imagine the answer the Bone Maiden might give. Or Rawhead. Or my splendid, monstrous Sorrow. Do not test my goodwill. Bring me Severin or I will harrow Fairfold. I have plans afoot and I would not like them to be interrupted. Sorrow hunts for him now, but I need her for other things.”