“You’ve freed me.” He looked back at her—and for a moment she thought that underneath all his cold fury, there was something else. “And you are likely to pay for your kindness in most grievous coin. Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know for sure I was involved until tonight. You said you heard my voice—was there anyone else there? Anyone giving me orders?”

He shook his head. “Only you. But by the time I came awake—truly awake—the sky was bright and you were gone.”

“I don’t remember that. I don’t remember going anywhere last night.”

He sighed. “Try to remember. Consider the fate of Amanda Watkins, who, by the way, I know you didn’t like. Still, the next victim might be someone you do care about.”

She startled at his saying that. He was a stranger, yet the way he spoke and the press of his fingers against her arm were oddly intimate. She’d imagined a scene so very like this so many times that to walk beside him in the dim woods had become half nightmare and half fantasy, all unreal. Hazel felt dizzy, as though she might faint. She kind of wanted to faint, so she didn’t have to deal with any of it. “Just because I don’t like her doesn’t mean I want her to die.”

“Well, then,” he said, as though that settled everything. “Perfect. She’s not yet dead.”

He didn’t even glance in her direction. He just kept walking.

They left the road, wading through the brush. Her heart felt as if it were going to thud its way out of her chest.

The phone in her pocket buzzed, but she couldn’t risk looking at it. She felt better knowing that Ben must have received her message, that someone was going to find Amanda.

“We left you some food and stuff,” she said, trying to fill the scary silence of their walk and disguise the sound of her phone, which buzzed again. Ben must be calling her. “My brother and I, we’re on your side.”

He didn’t need to know she had doubts about his story.

A pained expression flashed across the horned boy’s face. “I am no hob or hearth spirit, to be obligated by gifts.”

“We weren’t trying to obligate you,” she said. “We were trying to be nice.”

Given the Folk’s obsession with manners, she wondered if he might feel at least a little bit bad about dragging her through the forest. She hoped he felt awful.

The horned boy bowed his head slightly, a thin smile on his face that she thought might be self-disgust. “You may call me Severin,” he said. “Now we are both nice.”

Which was as close to an apology as one of the Folk was likely to give, given that they prized their own names highly. Maybe he really did feel bad, but Hazel got the sense that it wouldn’t matter. Whatever drove him, its hooks bit deeper than courtesy.

Time slipped by as they walked, her stumbling and his walking beside her, catching her arm if she moved too far or too fast, her body still sore from crashing her bike, her mind buzzing. They plodded on until they returned to the grove.

Severin let go of her and went to the remains of the casket. “Do you know what this was? Not glass,” he told her, sliding his hand inside, running his fingers over the lining. “Nor is it crystal. Nor is it stone. It’s made of tears. Almost impossible to shatter. Made by one of the finest craftsmen in all of Faerie, Grimsen. Made to hold a monster.”

Hazel shook her head numbly. “You?”

He snorted. “No one tells the old stories anymore, do they?”

“What are we doing?” Hazel asked him.

He took a deep breath. “You need to recall who has Heartsworn. Who gave you the blade and guided your hand? Who told you how to break the casket and end the curse?”

“I can’t—”

“You can,” he said softly. He brought up one hand to her cheek. His fingers were cool against her hot skin, brushing back hair from her face. She shuddered. “For all our sakes, you must.”

She shook her head, thinking of the sword she’d found beside Wight Lake all those years ago, the one that had disappeared from beneath her bed. “Even if I had the first idea where the sword was, what makes you think I would tell you?”

“I know what you want of me,” he said, coming closer. Everything else seemed to melt away. He lifted her chin, canting her face toward his. “I know every one of your secrets. I know all your dreams. Let me persuade you.”

And, pressing her back against the blackened trunk of a tree, he kissed her. His lips were hot, his mouth sweet. And inside her, a warm, numb darkness flooded her thoughts, making her skin shiver.

Then Severin moved back from her, leaving her to smooth down the front of her pajama top.

“Benjamin Evans,” he called into the darkness. “Come out. Don’t worry about interrupting us.”

“Get the hell away from her!” Ben’s voice, shaky but determined, came from the other side of the grove.

It was the worst thing about being a redhead, Hazel thought, the way blushes splashed up onto her cheeks and down her neck until she practically felt as if her scalp were burning.

Ben stepped farther out of the shadows, looking flushed, too. He was carrying an ax their mom used sometimes to chop kindling for the stove in the art studio. “Hazel, are you okay?”

Her brother had come to save her, like in the old days. She couldn’t quite believe it.

The elf knight smiled, and there was an odd light in his eyes. He stalked toward Ben languorously, spreading his arms wide in invitation. “Going to split me open as though you were a woodsman in a fairy tale?”

“Going to try,” Ben said, but there was a quaver in his voice. He was tall and gangly, all loose limbs and freckled skin. He didn’t look dangerous. He didn’t even look like he could heft the ax without straining.

She felt a hot wave of shame that Ben had seen the horned boy kiss her, when for so long he’d been something they’d shared between them.

“Ben,” Hazel cautioned. “Ben, I’m okay. If anyone’s going to fight, it should be me.”

Her brother’s gaze flickered to her. “Because you don’t need anyone’s help, right?”

“No, that’s not—” She took a step toward him, before Severin drew his golden knife.

“It would be better if neither of you fought me,” Severin said. “You’ve got the range and your weapon may bite deeply, but I’ll wager I’m faster. So what are you to do? Will you run at me? Will you swing wildly and hope for the best?”

“Just let her come home,” Ben said. His voice shook a little, but he hadn’t backed down, not an inch. “She’s scared. It’s the middle of the night and she’s not even dressed. What do you think you’re doing, grabbing her like that?”

Severin slid a little closer, moving as lightly as a dancer. “Oh, you mean instead of grabbing you?”

Ben flinched as though he’d been slapped. “I don’t know what you think you’re—”

“Benjamin,” Severin said, his voice dropping low. His face was inhumanly beautiful, his eyes as cold as the sky above the clouds, where the atmosphere is too thin to breathe. “I have heard every word you’ve ever said to me. Every honeyed, silver-tongued word.”