“I know what happened because of that kiss,” Hazel said, keeping her gaze on the kettle, fixing cups of tea.

Ben’s voice had gone soft. “That wasn’t because… you can’t blame yourself because I lost control. I kept losing control. I wanted to go to music school because I was already afraid of how much I was losing control. When I saw Kerem with you, the first thing I thought was that maybe I’d enchanted him to like me. Because I’d liked him so much. After what happened, after my teacher—look what I did with my hand. That was a good thing. What happened in Philadelphia was my fault and no one else’s.”

It was on Hazel’s lips to say that no, it was all her fault, and then she realized how ridiculous that would sound. They had been hiding secrets from each other, resenting each other, and it had all been for nothing. Ben had never blamed her. For so long, her determination to hide this from Ben had been the center of so many of her choices. She felt almost impossibly light without the burden of it. “Smashing your fingers wasn’t a good thing, Ben. What you can do is incredible.”

“You sold seven fucking years of your life for my scholarship and you never even told me.” Ben still sounded angry, but not with her. “You should have told me. Maybe we could have figured something out.”

“Well, we have to figure something out,” Jack said, interrupting them. “Tell them the rest.”

And Hazel did. She told them about the messages, about waking up with mud on her feet, afraid that her debt had come due; she told them about the revel and the Alderking’s words. In turn, Severin told them his story, with Ben nodding along.

“Why now?” Ben asked. “That’s the question, right? What changed? What is the Alderking up to?”

“He found some way to control Sorrow,” Hazel said. “Isn’t that it?”

Jack shook his head. “We shouldn’t be thinking about what changed recently. We should be looking back. Something set him off, made him lose his leash on the wild fey like the townspeople said at the meeting. Eight years ago, the Court in the East was taken over. Could that have pissed him off enough?”

“Too recent,” Ben said.

“Who rules there now?” Severin asked, but Jack held up his hands helplessly.

“I don’t pay attention to names,” he said. “None of it means anything to me.”

Severin nodded thoughtfully. “I still have some contacts in my father’s court. No one with any real power, but some of the wild fey who knew my mother spoke with me. They told me that a little more than a sesquidecade back, the Alderking took another one of the wild fey as a lover. She tarried with a mortal, though, and bore him child. That’s around when other mortals began dying in greater numbers, yes? And that’s when he began in earnest to find a way to control my sister, turning her dead husband’s bones into an enchanted ring.”

“A sesqui-what?” Hazel asked, a shiver of horror going through her. She’d seen a bone ring on the Alderking’s finger, but never would have supposed it was carved from a corpse.

“Sesquidecade. Fifteen years,” Jack said, mouth moving like he tasted something bad. “It’s an SAT word. And the woman you’re talking about is my mother.”

Ben’s eyebrows went up. Even Severin looked surprised.

“Your mother?” Hazel asked. She remembered the elf woman in the faerie court, clutching at Jack’s sleeve. There had been real fear in her face.

Jack nodded. “That’s why she hid me. She was the Alderking’s lover, but he wasn’t very nice, so she took up with a human and wound up with me. That’s why she wanted to leave me with humans, to keep me out of his path. At least until he forgot the slight.”

Hazel wondered if he’d ever told anyone this story before. Considering the way he was looking at his cup, not meeting any of their eyes, she suspected he hadn’t.

Severin’s expression was all regret. “If your mother broke faith with him, if she spurned him for a mortal, his vengeance would have been terrible. Not just on the town, not just on that mortal man, but on your mother as well. He would have hurt her.”

Jack looked sick. “No. She would have told me.”

“That seems like a good reason to want him dead,” Ben said. “Could she be the one with the sword?”

Hazel hesitated, then spoke. “She did say an odd thing to me. When I told her I was there looking for Ainsel at the revel, she seemed to know something, but kept implying I should shut up.”

Jack rubbed a frustrated hand over his mouth. “She made that odd remark about my being there to save you. Does this mean that people at that town meeting were right? This is all my fault?”

“No,” Hazel said. “Never. This is never your fault.”

“But Jack’s mother—what’s her name?” Severin asked.

“Eolanthe,” Jack said.

“I knew her, once.” Severin gave Jack a strange look, one that made Hazel think he knew her better than a little. “She’s very beautiful, very clever, but no swordswoman. If she managed to take Heartsworn from Hazel, whether by trickery or force or out of the generosity of her night heart, she would still need someone to wield it.”

“So, okay, play this through,” Ben said. “Jack tells his elf mother offhandedly about this girl he knows, maybe says she found a sword. So Eolanthe decides to, what? Persuade Hazel to break the curse on Severin? Free a sleeping prince of Faerie—but then not give him the one thing that would let him face his father and defeat Heartseeker?”

Jack nodded. He’d started pacing the floor, not looking at any of them, caught up in his own thoughts. “I might have said something about Hazel and her sword, when I was younger. And Hazel probably wouldn’t need a lot of convincing to break Severin’s curse.”

Hazel laughed. “Ben would need even less.”

Her brother made a face at her.

“Your mother doesn’t seem like the sort of person who’d ally with anyone,” Hazel said. “Least of all me. She didn’t like me much.”

“What about just taking the sword?” Ben asked. “Maybe she stole it and then left a bunch of cryptic crap to confuse us. Made us chase our own tails while she put her plan in motion.”

“So what about Severin’s curse, then?” Hazel asked. “Why bother breaking it?”

“It could be a distraction for the Alderking,” Jack said, looking over at Ben with a frown, as though they were making a particularly devious plan rather than guessing at one. “Plus it’s the proof that Hazel had Heartsworn. Only Heartsworn could smash the casket and break the curse. So no point in stealing a sword until you’re sure.”

Severin raised his delicate brows. “Then we are back to her needing a swordsman.”

Ben shrugged. “You said she was pretty and clever. Maybe she found someone who was good with a weapon and wanted to stop the Alderking. There have to be a few bravos at court, right?”

“Well, there’s at least one,” Hazel said with a snort that had nothing to do with humor. “I want to stop him.”

“There’s a way to send my mother a message,” Jack said, going to the cutlery drawer and pulling out a slender steak knife. “Blood summons blood.” He went out the kitchen door to the backyard. “If she has the sword, I’ll promise her anything for its return. If she wants me, I will be hers. Whatever must be sworn, I will swear it.”