“Stop,” Hazel shouted. If she’d known where the sword was, she might have told him, but it was impossible to think, impossible to puzzle anything through with Ben screaming. She was glad for the knot Jack had put in her hair. Without it, she would have wept. “Stop. Stop or I will stop you.”
At that, the Alderking laughed. “Ah, yes, there’s that true nature of yours coming out. You play at obedience, but it isn’t obedience if you only answer the orders you like. Much as my son does.”
Ben screamed again. A second finger.
The Alderking had Heartseeker on his right, sheathed in the furred skin of some creature. Could Hazel get herself another weapon and slit his throat before he drew on her? Hazel thought it was unlikely, but she eyed the courtiers, noticing a goat-footed girl with a knife strapped to her belt, and wondered. She pictured herself grabbing the blade. She counted how many steps to the throne there were and calculated how fast she could take them at a run. Her fingers twitched.
She had to do something.
“One cannot heal a musician’s fingers without breaking them,” said the Alderking. “Your brother is in pain, but his suffering may be a boon to him. If you both continue being obstinate, I will do far worse. There are some torments so terrible they change a person forever. There are some torments so terrible that minds refuse to withstand them. You had best tell me what you know and you better tell me now.”
“Leave Benjamin alone,” Severin said. “Your grievance is with me, Father. Leave him!”
Hazel had to do something. She had to stop Ben from being hurt.
“Me,” Hazel said. “I freed Severin. Me. So leave Ben alone. I did it and I did it by myself.”
“You?” The Alderking stood, eyes blazing. “You who came to our sacred hawthorn tree and asked for our help? Was it not you who gave up seven years of your life voluntarily, gladly, even? I could have taken those seven years any way I wished, but I wasn’t cruel. Instead, I gave you not just what you asked for, but all the things you never dared ask. When you came to me, you were a child, eleven years old, and we stole you from your bed to fly through the skies on rushes and ragwort. We trained you to swing a blade and to take a blow. We taught you to ride on our swift-footed steeds, like you were Tam Lin himself. Some part of you recalls it, recalls the wind whipping your hair and the howl of the night sky before you. Recalls the lessons in courtly manners. Recalls laughing when you rode down a girl from Fairfold out by the highway, the footfalls of the other knights behind you, your horse outpacing theirs—”
“No. You’re wrong. I didn’t do that,” Hazel said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. But they didn’t lie—couldn’t lie, so some part of it was true. She thought of the dream she’d had, the one where she’d tormented a family and laughed when they were cursed to stone. How much had she been changed in his service? How much could she trust her other self?
“I made your wishes come true.” The Alderking spread his hands wide in a gesture of acceptance, smiling. “And if our gifts have barbs, you know enough of our nature to expect that. And so, tell me, who told you how to free my son? The real answer now. Who gave you Heartsworn? And where is my sword?”
“I don’t know,” Hazel said, panicked, because she didn’t know where the sword was, yet he had no reason in the world to believe her.
He beckoned to the Bone Maiden, who advanced toward the throne, drawing a thin and jagged blade. It looked as though there was dried rust or blood marring the metal. “Mortals are born liars,” said the Alderking. “It’s the only thing your kind has any exceptional talent in.”
Hazel swallowed and prepared herself. She let herself be afraid, let herself get lost in the moment, tried not to think too much. She needed her instinct. She hoped she seemed stunned enough that the Bone Maiden expected her to be passive, to allow herself to be tortured, to scream and weep and never fight back. And when the creature got close enough for Hazel to smell the crushed-pine-needle scent of her, to see the strange gleam of her ruby eyes, then Hazel went for the rusty knife.
It scraped the skin of her arm as she moved, hand closing on the blade. It cut her palm, but she jerked it out of the hag’s hand and slammed it into the creature’s throat. Black blood gouted out. The hag’s long fingers scrabbled at her neck, but her eyes were already dulling, the shine going out of them.
A knight grabbed hold of Ben, jerking his hands behind his back, careless of his fingers. Ben howled with pain.
Three of the knights circled Hazel, wary of the thin, rusty knife. She slipped into a crouch, watching them.
“No,” commanded the Alderking. “Let her keep it. You see, Sir Hazel, so long as I have your brother, it’s my hand that holds the knife.”
“It looks like your hand slipped,” she said as the hag’s body gave a final twitch and was still. Hazel was flushed with victory and violence. She felt like her most dangerous self, the self who had once walked through the woods of Fairfold and believed herself to be their defender. Around her, the crowd of courtiers had gone silent. She had brought death to this place, to these deathless and ancient people, and they watched her with wide, puzzled eyes.
“Observe,” he said, speaking as though he were giving a lesson to a very small child. “Now, Hazel, I want you to recite the rhyme to summon the monster at the heart of the forest, my sweet daughter. You know it, don’t you? Say the words or he’ll gut your brother.”
Hazel hesitated for a moment, realizing how trapped they all were. “Fine,” she said, taking a deep breath. The singsong tone of it brought back memories of skipping rope, of the feeling of bare feet hitting hot pavement on a summer day, and of the ever-present temptation of saying that final word. “There’s a monster in our wood. She’ll get you if you’re not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. A nest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming… home.”
Hazel felt the ripples of magic, felt the breeze that blew through the hollow hill, felt the touch of cold that accompanied it. Sorrow was coming, and if he could really control her, they were all doomed.
The Alderking nodded. “Very good. Now, let’s see what else you can do. Slash your own arm or my knight will slice open your brother’s face. See how you hasten to obey? Go ahead, hasten.”
Hazel pushed up the sleeve of her shirt with trembling fingers. She raised the Bone Maiden’s crooked little blade, pressing the tip to her skin. Then she pressed down until sharp, bright pain bloomed across her arm, until a thin trickle of blood ran all the way to her palm, spattering onto the stone.
The smile that cut across the Alderking’s face was awful.
“Hazel, stop,” Ben yelled. “Don’t worry about me—”
“Enough, Father,” Severin shouted, his voice commanding. “She doesn’t have Heartsworn.”
“She’s a liar,” said the Alderking. “They lie! All mortals lie.”
“It’s me that Hazel is protecting,” Jack said, stepping away from the other courtiers, eyes flashing silver, head held high. Eolanthe reached for him, but he shrugged off her touch. All around him, courtiers went quiet. He walked before the Alderking’s throne and made an elaborate bow, one that Hazel had no idea he even knew how to make. “I conspired to betray you. Let her go. Let her go and punish me instead.”
“No!” his mother said. “You swore! You swore not to harm him.”
“Jack?” Hazel said, frowning. She felt light-headed, maybe from the blood running down her arm. For a single moment, she wondered if there was some truth to it, if there was another secret yet to be revealed. Then she saw the flash of panic on his face, heard the catch in his voice.
He was buying her time. Time for her to puzzle through the clues she’d left herself.
Carrots. Iron rods.
Remember to kneel.
What did it mean? The human farmer had tricked the boggart by planting carrots underground. And the iron rods were buried as well.
Maybe she buried the sword.
“You? The boy who plays at being mortal?” The Alderking studied Jack through narrowed eyes and then moved to his throne, sweeping back his cape and sitting. “What possible reason could you have to stand against me? Your birth was proof of your mother’s betrayal and yet here you are, alive and unharmed.”
Remember to kneel.
“What does it matter why?” Jack said, and there was something in his expression—as though he was daring the Alderking to press him further.
“You presume much, changeling child.” The Alderking’s brows rose. “I may have promised your mother that I would order no hand raised against you, but Sorrow will welcome your pain—your death—because all she knows is pain and death and grief. Put him into the cage with my son.”
Jack took a deep breath and then half smiled, allowing himself to be forced back from Hazel, toward the cage. Despair flooded her. They were all going to die. She wanted nothing more than to sink down onto the cold stone and beg, offer up anything, everything. But she had nothing to offer.
Carrots. Iron rods.
Remember to kneel.
Then she realized what the answer must be. She knew where she’d hidden the sword.
Heartsworn, a blade that could cut through anything, a blade so sharp that it could be sheathed in stone itself. And that’s where she must have hidden it, just as she first found it, buried blade deep in the dirt and sand beside Wight Lake. The Alderking would no more look for it paving the ground of his throne room than he would look for it among the clouds.
Remember to kneel.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, looking for any shine in the dirt between the massive stone tiles. She spotted what she thought might be a shimmer, but it could have been a trick of the light. She had one chance to find it.
Three knights in gleaming gold marched Jack to the cage and gingerly opened the door. As it swung wide, though, Severin ducked down, rolling under the swords knights pushed through the bars to hold him back. He’d clearly been anticipating them, and he moved fast. Fast enough that by the time they’d pulled their swords out to face him, he was through and straightening up.
Wounded from whatever fight had taken place earlier, he wore the ripped and bloodstained remains of a shirt wrapped around his waist—Jack’s undershirt, she realized.
The knights who had been standing near Hazel ran toward Severin, swords flashing. Hazel had her chance. She crossed quickly to where she thought she’d seen a glimmer of the hilt.
Then, despite herself, she looked back toward the cage.
The knights had surrounded Severin, none of them bold enough to come at him, despite the fact that he was unarmed. Severin spoke. “Give me your sword,” he said to Marcan. He looked like the prince of Hazel’s childhood, the one who was going to wake up and make everything right. “Give me your sword and let me die with a blade in my hands. I don’t want to fight any of you and my father has Heartseeker. You can hardly fear for him. Surely, he will fight me. I cannot win.”
The courtiers looked from one to another, a nervous energy taking hold of them.
The Alderking stood, drawing Heartseeker from his sheath with a terrible scrape of metal on metal. He looked at the assembled throng. They were watching with eagerness and something else—something she thought might be hatred. The Alderking could not lose with the enchanted blade in his hand, but no one would delight in his winning.
“Take mine,” Marcan said, and placed his sword in Severin’s hand.
“I didn’t give you leave to arm him,” the Alderking snapped.
“No prince should die for want of a sword,” said Marcan, a muscle moving in his jaw. It was no safe thing to lecture a king.
The Alderking sneered. “And yet so many do.”