Ben just stared at her. He’d seen the Folk, but only a few, and those had been scary enough. He couldn’t imagine willingly walking into a gathering of them. Especially if he were Hazel, who’d killed at least three. Her daring always surprised him, but right then he was floored. “The Alderking wants you to bring him Severin?”

Hazel gave him a sharp look. “How did you know Severin was his son? He didn’t tell us that the other night.”

Ben shrugged. “I guessed. Well, who else could it be?”

Hazel shook her head. “You’re a god-awful liar. You’re still in yesterday’s clothes. Obviously, I’m not the only one with secrets. So where were you last night?”

Ben let out a sigh and walked all the way into the room, closing the door behind him. “Nowhere. Here. Severin came here. He wanted my help.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up, and Hazel went completely rigid, as though she thought she ought to do something, but had no idea what. Ben couldn’t help but be a little bit pleased that he could occasionally be shocking, too.

“Is he—what did the horned boy say?” his sister asked.

Jack sat down on the chair in front of her vanity, looking deeply uncomfortable, as if he was afraid he was going to be asked to choose sides in an argument that hadn’t happened yet.

“For one thing, he wants his magical sword back,” said Ben.

“I hope you didn’t promise it to him,” Hazel said. “I don’t have it. And before you ask, I don’t know who does have it or where it’s being kept—I was looking for clues at the revel.”

“So what else did you learn?”

Hazel rubbed her hand over her face and glanced toward Jack. The look he gave her was expressive. “Not much,” she said finally. “Could you get in touch with Severin again? Could you get him to meet us?”

“I don’t know. You’re not thinking of actually trying to hunt him down for the Alderking, are you? You’re not going to hurt him.”

“I’m willing to do whatever I have to,” Hazel said, standing. A muscle in her jaw jumped, as if she’d been clenching her teeth.

There was a moment when Ben thought about not telling her, when he imagined himself going across the hall and not saying a single thing. But he thought about people being brought out on stretchers from the school, and he thought about what Severin had said about his own sister. “Will you tell me everything, all the stuff you’ve been hiding from me?”

Hazel glanced at Jack and he looked back at her, his eyebrows rising. She must have told him some of it, for them to share a look like that.

“I will,” Hazel said. “I should have before. Just, do I have to tell you right now? Because I’m dead on my feet and there’s a lot.”

Although it sounded like another excuse, this time Ben believed her. She looked exhausted and oddly fragile. “Okay. But he’s in my room.”

“What?” Hazel pushed herself up off the bed and took a step toward the door. “Are you kidding me?”

“Oh no,” Ben said. “No, you don’t get to be angry, you who’ve been lying to me and hiding things from me. You who brought my best friend with you and made him complicit in the lie. You don’t get to be mad!”

Hazel’s face shuddered. “I was trying to protect you.”

Jack looked as though he wanted to say something. He was clearly tired, too, bright-eyed and hollow-cheeked.

“He’s asleep. I’m not going to wake him up to be interrogated.” Ben’s heart was hammering. Although he’d demanded she tell him the truth, after seeing her reaction, he was starting to suspect that whatever she’d been hiding from him was bigger than he’d previously thought. He was a little scared to hear it.

“You’ll make sure he stays?” Hazel asked.

Ben had no idea how he was supposed to do that. “Yeah. When you get up, we’ll figure things out.”

Jack rose, as if maybe he’d remembered it was ungentlemanly to stay in a girl’s room when he’d slept over in her brother’s a million times.

“No, stay,” Hazel said softly, catching his fingers.

Jack looked helpless to refuse her.

Which made Ben wonder if he’d been wrong about Hazel being fated for Severin. “Sleep tight,” Ben said, backing out before Jack had time to reconsider. He wasn’t ready to share Severin with anyone yet. He was just getting to know him, just getting to think of him as a person it was possible to know.

As he crossed the hall, Ben felt a flash of fear that when he opened the door and then he saw that Severin was no longer there. It was as though by speaking Severin’s name aloud, by telling his sister about the midnight visit, he’d broken some spell. The window was open, curtain billowing and a few brown leaves resting on the floor where they’d been blown in from the trees outside.

Panicked, Ben climbed onto the slope of the roof, sending a loose strip of shingle flying to the ground far below. The sky was early-morning pale and bright, the dew still wetting everything.

Ben sucked in a breath of cool air. For a moment, he saw only trees and road. Then, a moment later, he spotted Severin sitting in a crook of the wide sycamore just past the gutters of the house.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Ben made his way slowly across the roof, trying not to slip. “Hey, are you—”

“I am not a thing to be fought over,” the horned boy said. He had stripped out of Ben’s hoodie and was in just the borrowed T-shirt and jeans, bare feet against the bark. But he looked entirely alien, shadowed by branches in the pale morning light.

“I know,” Ben said, edging closer to the tree. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you heard, but I guess you heard some of it. She wouldn’t hurt you, even if she could.”

Severin smiled. “I have a sister of my own, you’ll recall. I know what it is to not see our siblings for who they truly are. You’ve done me a good turn that I will not soon forget, Benjamin Evans. You’ve given me succor this night. Nothing more can be asked of you.”

Ben climbed up into the tree, unsure of where to put his feet. For a moment he thought he was going to slip, but he managed to steady himself. “Hazel went to the revel. She saw your father. He spoke with her. We need to pool information, figure out next moves. Besides, I know you like Hazel, even if you pretend like you don’t.”

Severin took Ben’s arm and hauled him deeper into the branches, where it was easier to balance. “Because I kissed her?”

“It’s just that Hazel is so—people like Hazel. Boys like Hazel. She goes through this world as if nothing touches her, as if no one can reach her, as though she’s focused on something bigger and better and more important that she’s not going to tell you a single thing about. It drives people crazy. It charms them.”

“And you’re not charming?” Severin asked him. Ben wasn’t sure if he was being mocked or not.

“I’m sure that when you kissed her, you noticed she wasn’t some irritable, gawky boy.” Ben felt ridiculous as soon as he said it. Feeling insecure was one thing; showing it was another.

Severin studied him for a long moment, then leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Ben’s. It was a searching, hungry kiss. His hand wrapped around Ben’s head, holding on to him instead of the tree. Ben’s hand fisted in Severin’s hair, brushed over horn, rough and cold as the back of a seashell. A few moments later, when he pulled away, Ben was trembling with some combination of lust and anger and fear. Because, yes, he’d wanted that. But he hadn’t wanted it thrown in his face.