Even with Rook between us, Hemlock’s unsettling, luminously green gaze fixed on my face. “Do try to be more polite, Rook,” she said. “Have a look around. Myself, Gadfly, even the winter prince—none of us do what we like now.” A smile twitched across her features. “I did tell both of you silly fools to run. I told you I’d be after you.”
Rook’s sword sang through the air. It moved so swiftly I didn’t see it strike, or see Hemlock raise her arm to block it. They stood locked together, the blade lodged in her armor, Rook’s coat billowing around him as the wind settled. Her smile hardened. She dug her heels in, and her arm shook with the effort of holding him at bay. But Rook and I were outnumbered. We knew it, and so did she.
She crooked one finger, beckoning the courtiers forward. “Make yourselves useful, please, and seize them. Do wipe your faces first.”
The fair folk swarmed from the forest. Before I could react, they tore me away from Rook. Dozens of hands grasped my clothes, my arms, my hair, sticky from their feasting on putrid fruit. They jerked me this way and that, as though pretending to dance with me—leering faces spun around me like a carousel. I lashed out with my ring, and someone gave a bloodcurdling scream.
“She has iron on her finger!” the fair one exclaimed. The voice was familiar—Foxglove. “Take it from her! Take the whole hand if you must!”
An arm struck me across the back, slamming me to the ground. Gulping air in hoarse gasps, I pulled my arm underneath me and lifted my chin just enough to see that Rook had been overpowered too. Gadfly stood behind him with his elbow wrapped around Rook’s throat and his other hand squeezing Rook’s wrist, which no longer held a sword. Mask gone, he looked calm and amused as Rook thrashed with bared teeth in his grip. Their height difference was such that Rook was bent backward, unable to find footing, while Hemlock’s hounds snapped at his kicking boots.
We had scored only two small victories. A chunk of bark armor hung loose from Hemlock’s forearm where she stood aside, nursing it. Sap dripped down, sharp with the smell of winter pine; the bark was already growing back over the wound. And Foxglove sat on the ground across from me, holding a hand to her cheek. An angry weal stood out on it where I’d struck her, already melting away to flawless skin behind the furiously trembling cage of her fingers.
I knew her command had been serious and the fair folk wouldn’t hesitate to follow it through. I tugged the ring off and flung it away, past the pool of rose petals spreading around me like a bloodstain. The iron wouldn’t do me any good now.
“You wicked, nasty creature,” Foxglove hissed, yanking me to my feet. I hadn’t seen her get up. I stifled a cry as she wrenched one of my arms out of its socket—tingling, lightning-bright sparks of pain shot through my shoulder, numbing me to every other sensation. I tripped forward, pushed from behind, barely managing to stay upright. The circlet hung askew on my head.
“No,” Aster’s wispy voice said nearby. “Don’t hurt her—don’t hurt them more than you have to, please—” Her touch alit on my arm before someone swatted it away.
“I’ll reach down her throat and tear her heart out if I so choose,” Foxglove snapped. “What is wrong with you, Aster? You would seek mercy for those who have broken the Good Law? This human wielded iron against me.”
Aster’s answer seemed to come from afar this time. “I’m sorry . . .”
“And stop looking at her like that,” Foxglove added, vehemently. I thought she was still addressing Aster until she went on, “How disgusting. Have some dignity, and die like one of your own kind.”
I raised my head to find Rook watching me, his agonized affections written plainly on his face. Some fair folk stared in revolted fascination. Others cringed away, unable to bear the sight. But Gadfly looked down at him, and then over at me, with a subtle, almost regretful smile shading the edges of his mouth. I was reminded of his many portraits, a hundred versions shifting in the firefly glow.
“Foxglove, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, let us not begin tearing hearts out quite yet,” he said. “Now that our masquerade has been cut so tragically short, I find myself unprepared for the evening’s diversions to end.” He sent a quelling look at Hemlock, who had started forward. “Oh, I insist. This is still my court, after all, isn’t it? Well, then—that’s settled. First, we shall take them to the Green Well. And we will give Isobel one last chance to save the prince’s life, and undo all the harm she has inflicted.”
The clamor that followed drowned out my scream. I slumped in Foxglove’s grasp, stars bursting across my vision.
“Now, everyone,” Gadfly said. “It’s only fair. And I promise it will be a memorable spectacle.” As Rook twisted against him, shouting incoherently with fury, he gave a cheerful wink.
The fairy host drove us forward, across the glade, through thickets and meadows, past the riven stone and the bluebells. The moonlight frosted everything like a dream. My head hung, but from time to time I caught glimpses of the thanes keeping pace with us on either side, colossal shadows striding through the wood, terrible in their immense and silent majesty. Hounds leapt among the fair folk like nobles’ dogs in a hunting party. And of course, Rook and I were the game. Perhaps it was fitting that the place where Rook had confessed his love to me would be the place where we died.
When we reached the Green Well it was just as I remembered it, even in the dark. The squat circle of mossy stones filled me with the same lurching horror as before, but Foxglove propelled me inexorably forward when my body stiffened and my steps shortened into halting, balking scuffles. She didn’t stop until the tips of my boots stubbed against the rocks. She tore the circlet from me while I writhed in her grip, and thrust my shoulders forward over the edge. Freed from its braids, my hair fell loose over the well’s shadows.
Gadfly brought Rook up short across from me on the other side. It was grimly satisfying to see that Rook had clipped his nose at some point on the short journey over. Blood smeared his mouth, and ferns and flowers sprouted around him where some of it had dripped to the ground.
“Isobel—” Rook began.
Hemlock stalked into view, kicking aside the overgrowth as it spread. She drove an elbow into Rook’s gut, and he doubled over, silenced. A few fair folk jeered. That was when I knew our death would be many things, but it wouldn’t be swift.
Swallowtail came forward with a winning smile. He stole Rook’s crown, placed it on his own head, and strutted around pretending to swing a shuttlecock racket as everyone laughed. Emboldened, another fair one approached, seized the lapel of Rook’s coat, and ripped the garment half off him. The raven pin went spinning into the flowers. Rook staggered. Then he lunged at the offender, only to go sprawling when Gadfly lifted a foot and neatly swiped his legs out from under him.
A sob caught in my throat. Rook climbed back to his feet, his clothes torn and his chest heaving. I never could have imagined him so humiliated.