CHAPTER 21
Once, there was a girl who found a sword in the woods.
Once, there was a girl who made a bargain with the Folk.
Once, there was a girl who’d been a knight in the service of a monster.
Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.
Once, there was a girl…
Hazel remembered everything at once, all the locks come undone, all the memories rising up from the deep, murky place where she’d buried them, all of herself crashing into herself. Not just the memories that the Alderking had taken from her. Faerie curses were more powerful than that. She got back every memory she ever tried to lock away.
The night after Hazel had slain the hag, her parents hosted a party. It went on until late, growing more and more boisterous as the evening wore on. A loud argument about the artistic value of illustration versus fine art turned into a fight about someone cheating on somebody else.
Ben and Hazel sat outside beside their dog’s fresh-dug grave and listened to the distant sound of a bottle smashing.
“I’m tired and hungry,” Ben said. “And it’s cold.”
He didn’t say and we can’t go back in there, but Hazel understood that part anyway.
“Let’s do something,” she said.
Ben looked up at the stars. The night was bright and cold. They’d both had an exhausting and terrifying day, and he looked wary of any more excitement. “Like what?”
“In your book, there’s a ceremony you have to go through to be ready for knighthood. A vigil. We should do that. To prove ourselves.”
The book was on the porch where they’d left it. Her sword was hidden in the shed where the machete used to be. She went and got them both.
“What does it say we’re supposed to do?” Ben asked, his breaths clouding in the air and rising like specters.
According to the book, first they had to fast. Since they hadn’t had dinner, Hazel thought that counted. Then they were supposed to bathe to purify themselves, dress in robes, and stay up all night praying on their knees in a chapel. Then they’d be ready to be knighted.
“We don’t have a chapel,” Ben said. “But we could make an altar.”
And so they did, using a big rock. They found a couple of old citronella candles and lit them, giving the yard an eerie glow. Then they undressed and washed in the ice-cold water from the garden hose. Shivering, they wrapped themselves in tablecloths swiped out of the laundry area.
“Okay,” Ben said. “So now we pray?”
They weren’t a particularly religious family. Hazel couldn’t even remember being to church, although there were pictures of her being baptized, so she must have been. She didn’t know exactly what praying entailed, but she knew what it looked like. She tugged Ben down to his knees next to her.
The ground was icy, but the sword slid into the earth easily. Hazel gripped the hilt and tried to concentrate on knightly thoughts. Thoughts about bravery and honor and trueness and rightness. She rocked back and forth on her knees, murmuring under her breath, and after a moment Ben copied her movements. Hazel felt as though she was falling into a dream. Soon she could almost ignore how cold she was, could almost not feel the heavy weight of her hair clumping as it froze, could almost control her shivering.
At some point, she was conscious of Ben getting up, of telling her it was too cold and urging her to come inside. She’d just shaken her head.
At some point, people had left the house. She’d heard cars starting, tense words exchanged, and the sound of someone noisily puking in the bushes. But no one noticed her kneeling in the back garden.
At some point, the sun rose, turning the grass to gold.
Hazel’s parents found her kneeling on the lawn later that morning when they stumbled out of the house, hung over and panicked at discovering her not in her bed. Mom was still in her dress from the night before, makeup smeared across her cheek. Dad was in a T-shirt and underwear, walking barefoot on the frost-covered grass.
“What are you doing out here?” Dad said, clasping Hazel’s shoulder. “Have you been out all night? Jesus, Hazel, what were you thinking?”
She tried to stand, but her legs were too stiff. She couldn’t feel her fingers. As her father lifted her up into his arms, she wanted to explain, but her teeth were chattering too loudly for her to get any words out.
And she remembered another night, too, slinking home through the woods after being in the Alderking’s service, a shudder never quite leaving her shoulders.
She had ridden with the Folk and pretended to laugh as they tormented mortals, aped their cruelty along with all else they taught her.
Let us curse them to be rocks until some mortal recognizes their true nature.
She knew she was the best hope of breaking the curse. Lying alone in her bed in the moments before dawn, waiting for her memories to wash out like a tide, she went over the conundrum. All she had to do was go out to the grove where they were and their true nature would be recognized. She would recognize them.
But only if she remained her night self. Her day self wouldn’t know.
Briefly, she imagined leaving a note for Ben. Maybe if she worded it right, he could break the spell. But no matter how she worded it, he would probably say just the wrong thing to her day self—a self she wasn’t sure she trusted.
Day Hazel was her, but with all the sharp edges blunted. Day Hazel didn’t know what it was to ride beside the Folk on sleek faerie horses, hair streaming behind her. She didn’t recall swinging a silvery sword with such force that the air itself seemed to sing. She didn’t know what it was to outwit them and to be outwitted. She hadn’t seen the wild and grotesque things night Hazel had seen. She hadn’t told the many, many lies.
Day Hazel needed to be preserved, protected. There would be no help there.
And so she concocted a plan. The terms of her service were simple. Every night, from the moment you fall into slumber until your head touches your pillow again near dawn, you’re mine, the Alderking had said.
The way she thwarted him was simple, too. She put her head down on her pillow but didn’t allow herself to sleep. Instead, she got back up again—and stayed night Hazel until dawn broke on the horizon and her memories fled with the dark.
Some nights, she was able to steal almost an hour. Other nights, mere moments. But it allowed her to break curses, to undo damage.
And, in time, it let her concoct a plan.
She knew what the Alderking intended to do with Sorrow. He flaunted Fairfold’s looming destruction before her, boasted about his plans for conquest and revenge on the Court in the East. Just as he let slip details he hadn’t thought mattered, about his lost sword and the means of releasing the horned boy. Slowly, Hazel had realized the value of the blade she had found all those years ago. Slowly, she had come to see that she was the only one with the means to stop him.
I may be stuck in his service, Hazel had thought, but if I free the prince, he could defeat his father. He’s not bound by any promises. He’s got enough vengeance in him for both of us.
That was when everything went wrong. Hazel remembered the panic that rose in her when the casket shattered, but the prince didn’t wake. She remembered the terror of trying to hide the sword, of leaving herself hasty, cryptic hints and then rushing to her bed before the first rays of light touched her.
She’d thought she’d have more time, but she had stolen only minutes when she woke next, until finally she’d awakened in her own house, with her brother and Jack and Severin standing over her and half the Alderking’s court outside.
“Where is it?” Ben asked her.
That was when the first of the faeries burst through the front door. Hazel scrabbled for the Sharpie and ran up the stairs to don her armor.
Hazel remembered all those things, slumped on the ground, as Ben told her they’d won, as Severin ordered his father’s body moved to the casket, where he could sleep away all the rest of his days, as the court crowded around the monster, as Jack said Hazel’s name over and over, until the words bled together.
She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.