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.”