Hazel felt as though she couldn’t quite get her breath. Music still played in the background, people still whirled around, laughing and dancing, but it all went a little blurry and odd in her peripheral vision. She seemed to have been robbed of her power of speech. He’d made a threat so vast and terrible she couldn’t quite believe she’d heard it right.
Hazel could tell from the Alderking’s expression that he no more expected Hazel to speak than he expected a toad to turn into a toadstool, but she had to say something.
Clearing her throat, she spoke. “If you set Sorrow on the town, I’ll stop you.”
He had a cruel laugh. “You? Like a wren stops a storm? Go now, Sir Hazel, and delight in the revel. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin your hunt. I will give you two days and two nights.”
The knight with the screaming faces on his shoulder plates stepped to her elbow. A lutist began playing. Lackthorn made a bow and disappeared into the crowd. Hazel knew she was dismissed.
“Oh,” the Alderking said, and she turned back to him. “One more thing. My son has a sword—a sword he stole from me. Bring it here and I will forgive your seven-year debt. Now, aren’t you pleased that I’ve given you this task?”
“How long have I served you?” Hazel said. “I made that vow when I was almost eleven. I’m sixteen now. That’s five years, give or take.”
“But you’ve only served me half that time,” said the Alderking. “You owe me all your daylight hours yet.”
Numbly, she began to move through the crowd. Finally, she found Jack, standing near a table set with golden plates piled high with ripped-open pomegranates whose ruby beads clung to the fruits’ wet, membranous skins; dusky plums; and grapes so purple they were black.
These are his people. She’d known it intellectually, but really seeing, really believing, had taken until that moment. This was all familiar to Jack, this hidden, terrifying, beautiful, awful place. These terrifying, cruel people.
But even knowing that, he was still the only familiar thing in a sea of strangeness.
“What did he say?” Jack asked, looking puzzled but not displeased when she took his hand. “Did you find out anything?”
Hazel shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him then and there, with all the eyes and ears around them. Anyway, she reminded herself, it was just one more secret, one more thing she couldn’t say, just one more thing she was going to have to figure out how to fix.
Step one: Figure out if her nighttime self was a villain.
Step two: Find out who was leaving her notes. Figure out if it was the same person who’d gotten her to smash Severin’s coffin. Figure out if that was the same person who had her sword.
Step three: Figure out whether Ainsel was a friend or another enemy.
Step four: Figure out how she was supposed to bring Severin to the Alderking.
It was enough to make her want to sit down on the ground and start to cry. It was too much. But there was no one else, so it couldn’t be too much. It had to be exactly enough. It had to be what she could handle, and she had to handle it.
“You want to do something before we go back?” Jack looked impish and oddly relaxed. “We could dance.”
“No dancing,” she said with a forced grin. “That’s one of the rules.”
He took her hand and drew her across the floor of the hollow hill, seeming to step outside the Jack she’d known most of her life, the Jack who was her brother’s best friend, the Jack who was safe and entirely off-limits. “I won’t let you dance until you wear the leather on your boots through. I won’t even let you dance until dawn. Now, isn’t that a handsome promise?”
The revel was as beautiful as it was awful. Maybe he wanted to show the beauty to her, to someone from his other life. There were so many things she couldn’t be honest about that she understood the allure for him to be able to be honest about this.
She rolled her eyes, but after the Alderking’s threats, she craved a distraction. “Promises, promises.”
A shadow passed over his face. Then he grinned and pulled her toward the music.
As they got closer, the songs crept deeper into her mind. The ache she’d first felt when she came to the revel returned, pulling at her, sinking down into her bones, and making her body move of its own volition.
The airs were sweet and wild, full of reckless stories of bravery and honor and chance that she’d lived on when she was little. A jolt of fierce joy shivered through her, and she spun toward the other dancers. The music caught her up and bore her along, leaving her feeling giddy and a little scared and then giddy again. Jack’s hand was in hers, then trailing over her waist, and then gone. She looked for him, but there were too many others dancing, all of them whirling and turning in a circle around the fiddler at their center. A girl with a crown of braids, a heavy brow, and upturned features laughed in a way that was almost a shriek. A boy with clawed hands dragged them over another boy’s shoulder. Above them, the curve of the hill seemed as distant as the night sky, a canopy of roots and glowing, darting lights. Beside her, Jack’s body moved in parallel, occasionally crushed against hers, warm and strong and not at all out of reach. Hazel danced and danced, until her feet were sore and her muscles ached, and still she danced. She danced until all her cares were swept away. She danced until an arm closed around her waist and pulled her from the circle.
They collapsed together on the packed earthen floor. Jack was laughing, his brow wet with sweat. “It’s good, right? Like nothing else.”
She felt abruptly dizzy and also as though she had suffered a terrible loss. She crawled back toward the whirling faeries. It seemed to her in that moment that if she just joined them again, she would be okay.
“Hey, whoa!” He grabbed her again, pulling her farther from the dance, causing her to have to stagger to her feet. “Hazel, don’t. Come on, sweetheart, time to get going. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would get you so bad.”
Sweetheart. The word hung in the air, pulling her halfway out of her fugue. But, no, he couldn’t have meant anything by it. Sweetheart was what you called lost cats and adorable toddlers and dames in old-timey movies. Hazel blinked at him, her head starting to clear.
He laughed again, this time a little uncertainly. “Hazel?”
She nodded, embarrassed. “I’m okay now.”
He slung his arm around her shoulders, giving her a half hug. “Good.”
At that moment, a girl ran up from the dance and grabbed hold of his collar. As Hazel started to object, the girl pressed her lips to Jack’s.
His arm slid free of Hazel, his grip going slack, his eyes fluttering closed. The girl had a wide red mouth, a bluish tint to her skin, blue roses braided into her messy brown hair, and the kind of unearthly beauty that caused sailors to steer straight for the heart of storms. Hazel had no idea how they knew each other or even if they knew each other, but watching the muscles of his throat move, watching the faerie girl’s hand travel across the bottom of his shirt, fingers sliding underneath, made shame heat Hazel’s cheeks. She didn’t know what to feel and desperately wanted to stop feeling entirely. Jack broke the kiss, looking toward Hazel, clearly dazed.
Cups of what appeared to be amber wine were passing by, carried by a creature in golden armor. The girl swept one into her hand, put it to her lips, and drank. Then she turned to Hazel.
And kissed her, full and deep. Startled and amazed, Hazel didn’t pull away, didn’t draw back. She felt the softness of the girl’s lips and the coolness of her tongue. A moment later Hazel tasted wine as the girl tipped it into Hazel’s mouth from her own.
No food or drink. That was one of the important rules, one of the big ones—because after you have their food, anything else tastes like dust and ashes. Or you go mad and wind up wearing a giant mushroom for a hat, running through town, believing that you were being chased by an army of grigs. Or possibly both at once.
So it wasn’t like Hazel didn’t know how foolish she’d been. Or how screwed she was.
It tasted as though starlight were slipping down her throat. She smiled stupidly at Jack. Then there was a great roaring in her ears and nothing more.