“You killed him? In cold blood?” It was a nightmare story, the kind that kept kids up, listening for movements in the dark.

“His blood was hot enough,” Severin said, looking out into the forest. “And mine, too. I was so angry that I didn’t consider what Sorrel would feel.”

“Because she was still in love with him, right? Her feelings hadn’t snapped like a branch or whatever yet.”

The elf shook his head. “I suppose that was an insufferable thing to say. Maybe we don’t love any differently than you do; maybe everyone loves until they don’t—or maybe everyone loves differently, humans and faeries alike. Forgive me. I grew up on my father’s boasting about the superiority of my people, and although I have listened to your kind for decades upon decades, it still hasn’t chased out all my worst habits of presumption.”

Ben, who’d been perfectly serious when he’d asked about Sorrel’s feelings changing, was mortified that Severin thought he’d been implying anything else. “No, I—”

“I didn’t understand,” Severin said. “I thought because Johannes was human, his life didn’t matter. How could his death matter? It seemed ridiculous that my sister could love such a creature, no less be hurt by him. If he wasn’t good to her, why not merely get another? I had no idea how long a single day could be. I didn’t know that the span of a single mortal life would seem interminable as I lay unmoving in that case. I didn’t know.”

Without quite deciding to do so, Ben slid off the bed. Although it was clearly the worst idea in the world and he thought he might faint or die, Ben put his hand on Severin’s back, feeling the corded muscles under his fingers, the brush of silken hair at the nape of the boy’s neck.

Severin tensed and then let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Maybe envy moved my hand, for Sorrel was my confidante at court. She took my side against our father. She made up silly songs for me when I was sad. Without her, I was alone and I wanted her back. We are all capable of great self-deception when it serves us.”

Ben was still touching him, not sure what to do with his hand—it seemed bizarre to leave it where it was, but incalculably daring to move it over to Severin’s shoulder or down to his chest. Ben inhaled the crushed-grass smell of him, took in the warmth of his skin.

Once, Ben had brought a boy out to Severin’s casket and made out with him on top of it, pretending it was the horned boy he was kissing.

He’d told Severin that, too. And it wasn’t even the most humiliating thing he’d told him. Ben didn’t move his hand.

After a moment, Severin spoke again. “She grieved, endlessly did she grieve for her dead husband. She abandoned her home, lying in a patch of moss in the woods and weeping. So terrible was her grief that beetles and birds, mice and stags, all wept with her, rotting away to fur and bone in their misery. Rocks and trees wept with her, cracking and shedding leaves. I went to her and begged her to put aside her sorrow, but she hated me for what I had done and would not. I threw away Heartsworn and begged her to revenge herself on me, but she would not listen even to that. Her grief transformed her. She became a monster, a nightmare creature of grief and sorrow, all because of me.”

“Your sister is… the monster?” Ben stammered.

“Yes,” Severin said. “The creature loosed on your town was once my sister. That’s the story I came to tell you. And you must understand that if I can save her, I will. But you should also understand the danger you’re in.”

Ben understood about sisters. And he understood about stories. But he didn’t understand what he’d done to merit being told this one.

“So you came to warn me?”

“When I heard your voice that night, I recognized it instantly. It’s a voice I know better than I know my own. For countless years, I have not spoken aloud. Now I can. It’s you I would speak with. You to whom I owe a great debt.”

“A debt?” He felt like a particularly stupid parrot, repeating the last thing Severin said.

“You know, it nearly drove me mad to listen to so many voices, a cacophony of sound, of words I didn’t know piling up, of time slipping in skips and jumps. And then you, speaking to me—to me. I started to know the length of a day in the interval between your visits.”

The blush started on Ben’s skin. It was all too much. He realized that Severin was going to hurt him worse than he’d ever been hurt before, because Ben had already set the blade to his chest, had already wrapped this stranger’s hand around the hilt.

He loved Severin and he barely knew him.

Severin told him the rest, how his father was troubled by Sorrel’s monstrous form, but yearned to find a way to harness her power. How he ordered Grimsen to craft a casket that would hold her until he could find a way to have control of her. Severin described the making of the casket, the forging of the metal frame from blood-quenched iron, and the crystal spun from tears. And he explained how he stood against his father, refusing to let the Alderking lock her away. The Alderking had railed at him, telling him that he wished Severin and Sorrel had never been birthed, swearing that should he beget another child, he would cut its throat rather than have it grow to betray him as they had. Severin would not back down, no matter how his father shouted. He would not let him put his sister in the casket.

But then the Alderking drew his magical sword, Heartseeker, the blade that could never miss. And since Severin had thrown Heartsworn away, he was screwed. He got trapped in the casket instead of her, and there he remained until Ben’s sister effected his release.

Ben tried to focus on the story, tried to focus on the words and figure out what it all meant, but all he could think of was how he was lost.

CHAPTER 16

Wake up,” Jack was saying, his voice floating somewhere above Hazel, his hand on her cheek. He sounded hoarse, as though he’d been shouting. “Please, please, please. Please, wake up.”

She struggled to open her eyes. It was as though they had been glued shut. When she finally managed to blink, she found Jack looming over her, looking angrier than she’d ever seen him. He punched the ground and closed his eyes for a long moment, drawing breath.

“What were you thinking?” he shouted, voice echoing off the trees. It was then Hazel realized that they were still in the forest, that there was a bed of grass and moss underneath her, and that the sky overhead was the pale gray of dawn.

She tried to sit up, but she was too dizzy. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I was—I don’t know. I’m sorry. What—what happened?”

“You mean before or after you tried to drown yourself in an underground lake?” Jack paced the carpet of pine needles, resting his head against the trunk of a tree and looking up at the clouds as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d been saddled with such an enormous burden. “Or how about how you recited prime numbers instead of speaking words? Or how you threatened some hulking, hairy grim with a knight’s sword, a sword, by the way, that I have literally no idea how you swindled away from him? Or how you passed out and I couldn’t wake you up and I was really worried, because there’s a lot of that going around right now?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, faintly, because she honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say. She didn’t remember much past the press of the elf girl’s mouth, past her lips parting and the taste of honey and wine. Everything else was blank blackness.