Jack stood up reluctantly. All around them the people of the town were standing, too, coming down from the second floor or out from where they’d hidden, fleeing across the lawn, to their cars, to their homes, away away away. “Ben’s right. We should get out of here.”

At the door, Hazel looked back. Across the room, Mom was standing, hand on a wall sconce, using it to keep herself upright. She stared at her children as though she’d never seen them before. Hazel turned to Jack. He was watching his own parents kneeling over Carter, his mother trying to lift her son’s body. Hazel could see the anguish on Jack’s face. His father had said the town could burn for all he cared, but she was sure he’d never meant Carter.

“It’s not your fault,” Hazel told him.

Jack nodded, and they walked out, past the deep, muddy tracks Sorrow had left in the grass, so different from the trample of footprints. Looking back at the house, at the sagging, broken boards of the porch, Hazel wondered how the town would explain this. Would the residents of Fairfold have to confront the bargain they made living there? Face that not all faeries were content to sup milk from chipped bowls, that some wanted blood?

“You okay to ride in a car again?” Ben asked the horned boy as they got closer to his Volkswagen.

“Your car?” Severin asked, following Ben’s gaze. The wariness on Severin’s face nearly made Hazel laugh, despite everything. Finally, he inclined his head. “If that is to be my fate, then I accept it.”

The horned boy got in on the passenger side, and Hazel and Jack slid into the back. She took Jack’s hand and squeezed it.

He squeezed back once, then let her fingers fall from his.

They drove back to the house quietly. The more time passed, the more Hazel’s head throbbed, the more her arms felt bruised from where she’d hit the couch. One of her ankles was swollen and a little unsteady. Her body hurt, and at nightfall, if she slept, she would become someone else. Someone with different memories and maybe different allegiances.

She couldn’t help thinking of the dream she’d had, of herself as one of the Alderking’s company, just as cruel as the rest. Hazel wasn’t sure she would like the person she became at night.

Once they got through the door of her house, Hazel went to the sink and took a long drink of water out of the faucet. Then she pulled herself up onto the counter.

Ben put the kettle on the stove and got down honey from the cabinet, then went to the bathroom for peroxide and bandages.

“What you did back there,” Hazel told him softly. “That was amazing.”

He shrugged. “I’m surprised it worked.”

“That makes it even more amazing.” She wiped her hands on her jeans.

Severin went to the table and straddled a chair backward, sitting on it as one might sit astride a faerie horse. A bruise was blooming along his jaw. Jack stood in the middle of the room, looking lost.

“So, Heartsworn,” Severin said finally. “But there’s more you’re not telling us, isn’t there, Hazel? I said you fought well and you did. I gave you the other sword because I saw from your stance that you could fight. Better it to be in the hands of someone with a little training than none. But the way you fought, I recognize it. It’s no mortal way of fighting.”

Hazel reached up into one of the cabinets and took out a bowl. She poured peroxide into it and wet a kitchen towel to rub over her cuts. This was the moment she’d dreaded, the moment when everything came tumbling out. She didn’t look at any of them as she started to speak. “At the revel, I discovered I’ve been in the service of the Alderking for the past five years. As soon as I go to sleep at night, I wake up and I’m someone else. And that person, I don’t know what she’s done, but she’s been trained to fight, and I guess my body remembers that, even when the rest of me doesn’t.”

At least Jack already knew. At least Jack wasn’t staring at her the way Ben was, as though she’d become a stranger.

“You have to understand,” Hazel said, forcing herself to go on. “I made a bargain a long time ago, but I know—”

“You made a bargain with the Alderking?” Ben shouted, surprising her into flinching. “You grew up in this town. You know better.”

Hazel watched the towel turn pink with blood as she drew it over her arm. “I was a kid. I was stupid. What do you want me to say?”

“Why did you do it?” Ben asked. “What did you bargain for?”

On the stove, the kettle began to howl.

After a few long moments, Hazel hopped down from the counter and turned off the stove. “Back when we were hunting faeries and having adventures,” she said, turning to her brother. “I didn’t want to stop. You know I didn’t want to stop.”

She expected him to look angry as he realized how stupid she’d been. She didn’t expect him to look afraid. “Hazel, what did you do?”

“I made a bargain so that we wouldn’t have to stop. You said that if you were better at music, we could keep going.” There was a child’s pleading in her voice and she hated it.

“You did this for me?” Ben asked, horror plain on his face.

Hazel shook her head ferociously. He’d got it all wrong. “No, I did it for me. I didn’t want to stop. I was selfish.”

“You got me that scholarship. That was you.” His voice had dropped low. He almost sounded as though he was saying the words to himself.

“Ben…”

“What was the exact nature of this bargain?” Severin asked, his cool indifference a relief.

“I promised that I would give up seven years of my life. I thought it meant I would just die sooner. Like years of life were something they would shave off the end and bottle up somehow.”

Severin nodded, his expression grim.

Ben didn’t look as if he thought dying seven years too soon made for a better bargain. He looked like he wanted to shake her. Hazel wished she could just stop talking. She wished she could make all her mistakes go away.

“That’s why you wouldn’t tell me any of this,” he said.

“That’s why I wouldn’t tell you any of this. It doesn’t matter why I did it. And anyway, I obviously ruined everything that was supposed to happen in Philadelphia anyway. I ruined it and it doesn’t matter what I intended, because I ruined it.”

“What are you talking about?” He was staring at her as though he really had no idea.

“You know what I did.” She hated having to explain. She hated that Jack was looking at her, all concern, and how differently he’d see her once he realized what she’d done. He’d said that anyone who offered up their heart on a silver platter deserved what they got, but he was wrong.

“Hazel, what you did? You mean when Kerem kissed you?”

“Obviously that’s what I mean,” Hazel bit out.

Ben threw up his hands, exasperated. “That’s not what you did—that’s what he did, because he was a jerk and he was thirteen and totally confused about everything. He was freaking out. Look, I’ve talked to him on Facebook and he’s fine now. He’s got a boyfriend, he’s out, his parents came around. But back then he was freaking out and his parents were freaking out and he wanted to prove he didn’t like me. You were there. That’s all.”