“Oh.” The word mortal struck Ben powerfully. It was such an odd, old-fashioned word. Mortal things were things that died.

Severin brought his fingers to Ben’s cheek, cool against hot skin. The faint smell of dirt and greenery came to him as Severin’s fingers lifted a piece of hair and tucked it behind Ben’s ear.

Ben’s whole body seemed to seize up at the touch.

Severin went on, hand moving away, leaving Ben to wonder what the touch had meant, if it had meant anything at all. Severin’s eyes seemed brighter than ever, shining with intensity. “Sorrel, my sister, was born to a court lady before our father’s exile. Father stole her away with him when he fled, along with seven magical blades—including the one I seek—and the smith who forged them, a creature named Grimsen, who could craft anything from metal. Father came to Fairfold with his retinue and called himself the Alderking, for the alder tree is known as the king of the woods. But Alderking has a more sinister meaning, too. Perhaps you’ve heard this before: Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an! Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!”

Ben shook his head. It sounded like German.

Severin moved away from Ben, away from the bed. He leaned against the windowsill, shoulders against the glass.

Abruptly, Ben felt as though he could breathe again. His lips were dry and he licked them.

“My father, my father, he grabs me fast. For sorely the Alderking has hurt me at last.” Severin’s hands clenched into fists, rings still glimmering on the fingers, contrasting with the shabbiness of the borrowed jeans and hoodie. “It’s one of your human poets, writing about a man whose child dies in his arms because of the Alderking. Pain is the Alderking’s meat, and suffering, his drink. He ruled over the solitary fey here in Fairfold and even got a son on one of them.

“A son who looked enough like his father’s people, although the horns that rose from his brow were all his mother’s. My mother was one of those wild fey—a phooka. Which means that though my father’s blood runs through my veins, I am no true heir for him. I am too much made of trees and leaves and open air. Maybe if my father liked me better, it would have spared my mother.”

The horned boy really was a prince, Ben thought. He recalled what Severin had said about his mother before, about her being cut down in front of him. Because of his father?

Severin kept talking. He was a good storyteller, the cadences of his voice rising and falling like the movements of a song. “Though I wanted our father’s approval, and Sorrel cared nothing for it, he favored her all the same. I would listen as he spoke of his plans to defeat the queen, Silarial, who’d exiled him, for neither his ambition nor his rage had cooled with time. My sister would tell him that fate had brought him to this place and he should delight in it. She loved the woods and she loved the town. Which was well enough until she also fell in love with a mortal boy.”

The way Severin said the words, he made it sound as though his sister had come down with some kind of deadly disease.

“That’s bad, then?” Ben asked. He wished Severin would come back to the bed, and then he didn’t. He felt like an idiot.

The elf’s eyebrows rose. “To my father? There was little worse she could have done.”

“And you agreed with him?” Ben wondered just how loathsome he was to Severin.

“Oh, I did. The boy was called Johannes Ermann, pale-haired and broad-shouldered, who liked to take long walks through the woods, daydreaming and composing odes to dank ponds and patches of wildflowers, which he would recite to anyone who’d listen. I didn’t like him much at all,” Severin said. “In fact, I killed him.”

Ben couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud. It was right out of a fairy tale, crazy and terrifying.

Severin grinned, as though he was a little amused, too. Maybe at Ben’s reaction, maybe in recalling how funny the murder had been. His smile made him even more beautiful, so beautiful that it was suddenly easy to remember that he wasn’t human and that Ben would be very foolish to imagine he was likely to behave like a human.

“I didn’t kill him right away; perhaps if I had, things would have gone differently. My sister became his wife, putting aside gowns woven from moonbeams, putting aside the wild pleasures of the woods. She allowed herself to be clad in a heavy, old-fashioned, ill-fitting silk dress from Germany, lent to her by the groom’s mother, and to go to one of their churches and make their vows.”

Ben tried to imagine it. Whispering through the glass of the coffin had felt a bit like screaming to a musician up onstage, like swooning over movie stars. But what happened if you were chosen from the crowd? What happened if you were summoned to the after-party? He wondered whether that was how Johannes had felt when he brought a faerie wife home.

“My father allowed Sorrel to marry only if her new husband would submit to a geas. Do you know what that is?”

Ben didn’t. “Like a quest?”

Severin shook his head. “It’s a taboo, a prohibition. A thing you must or must not do. My father said that if my sister wept three times because of Johannes, he would never see her again. Johannes, besotted, agreed.

“Sorrel was a dutiful wife, making supper and mending clothes, tending to a garden and attending church on Sundays. She tried to create a welcoming home for her husband, but her strangeness was obvious, no matter how she tried to fit in. She stitched fanciful roses and leaves onto the cuffs of a sober coat. She made a pet of a blue jay. She added herbs to her jams and jellies as she sang bawdy songs. But she adored Fairfold—and that was what I never understood. No matter that the townsfolk looked at her askance, she loved them. She loved to play games with the children, loved to laugh at the gossip. And, for all I sneered at him, she loved Johannes.

“You must understand. We do not love as you do—once won, our love can be terrifyingly constant. After they were married, Johannes changed toward her. He became more afraid of her strangeness, no matter that she remained his loyal wife.”

“So he was a jerk?” Ben asked, propping himself higher against his headboard. There was something disturbingly intimate about sitting in bed and talking about this stuff, even if the story ended in tragedy. “Was she sorry she married him?”

“We love until we do not. For us, love doesn’t fade gradually. It snaps like a branch bent too far.”

To Ben, love was the flame in which he wanted to be reborn. He wanted to be remade by it. He understood why Sorrel had run away to start over. And for the first time, he understood what a bad plan it was. “Is that what happened?”

“I fear not.” Severin rose and turned a little, fingers against the window, profile blurred in the moonlight. Ben suspected that Severin didn’t want him watching his expression shift as he spoke. “Maybe Johannes didn’t remember the geas or didn’t consider the consequences, but my sister wept because of him. The first time, it was because Johannes reprimanded her in public for her wildness. The second time she wept was because he remonstrated her for not keeping the Sabbath. The third time she wept, it was because he struck her. There would be no fourth.

“Of the seven magical swords my father brought from the Court in the East, two were special. Heartseeker and Heartsworn, they were called. Heartseeker never missed its mark. Heartsworn could cut through anything, from rock to metal to bone. My father gave me Heartsworn and told me to kill Johannes. I was angry enough and I despised humans enough and I wished to please my father badly enough. While Sorrel was out gathering herbs, I went to her house and struck Johannes down.”