She took a step back, unnerved by the force of his anger. “For your safety! I have but a few moments to bring you from this place. Come. Whatever you think of me, you will be able to do more for your friends if you’re not clapped in chains with them.”

“No,” Jack said. “I’m not going with you. No.”

“Heed her,” said Severin. “There is no shame in living. Without Heartsworn, we cannot win.”

But Jack only shook his head.

Hazel had to do something, but she could think of only one possible move. She remembered the story Leonie had told her, the one where Jack commanded Matt to punch himself in the face and Matt had done it. She remembered the way Jack had knotted her hair and commanded her not to cry.

“Jack,” Hazel said, grabbing hold of his arm so he had to look at her. “Can you make me sleep?”

His eyes were full of anguish. He didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.

His mother frowned. “Jack, you must come away with me.”

“Can you make me sleep?” she asked again, raising her voice to a near shout. “Like a spell—like the way you made it so I couldn’t cry. It’s still night, so if I sleep and then wake up again, I won’t be myself. I’ll be her. The other Hazel. She’ll tell you everything.”

They all stared at her with blank incomprehension, but she couldn’t say more with Eolanthe standing right in front of her, ready to tattle to the Alderking.

“What if night Hazel isn’t entirely on our side?” Severin asked, raising a single arched brow. “At least our Hazel will fight for us.”

She smiled at that—their prince calling her our Hazel. Just as in one of their stories.

“Hazel’s always on our side,” said Jack. He touched her brow gently. She thought he would give her the command then, but instead he leaned in and kissed her. She felt the soft pressure of his mouth against hers, felt the smile stretching his lips. Then he pulled back a little ways and spoke. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep.”

She felt the magic rolling over her, a vast wave, and at the last second, even though she’d asked him to do it, she fought the enchantment. Trying to keep her eyes open, she surged up off the cushion. Then she staggered forward and fell. The last thing she remembered was Ben’s shout and Jack’s hand catching her moments before she slammed her head against the floor.

CHAPTER 20

Between one blink and the next, Hazel woke.

She was marching, along with several of the Alderking’s knights, through a cave-like opening. Overhead, milky light filtered through the leaves and the wind made the branches dance. Day had come. Then they moved into the darkness of the hollow hill, full of worming roots above them, like pale waving arms, and thorned vines blooming with strange white flowers crawling up the walls. Blue-footed mushrooms lined their path.

And creaking along behind her, guarded by ten knights on each side, was a cage—black metal twisted in the form of bent branches set on large, ornate wheels. It held Severin and her brother. Ben sat on the floor of the cage, looking terrified but unhurt. Severin paced it like a beast in a zoo, his rage seeming to radiate out. His cheek was slashed, and there was a dark stain in his midsection that even at this distance she knew was probably blood.

Her step faltered. Why was she free when they’d been captured, when they’d fought? What had she done?

Why hadn’t she fought with them? Why wasn’t she in that cage?

“Sir Hazel?” an unfamiliar voice asked. She realized she was standing among the Alderking’s knights, dressed like one of them—dressed in the stiff doublet she’d found where her sword used to be, the one that had been beside the book. Looking at the knight who had spoken, she realized she wore the mirror of his garb, although he had plates of shining golden armor down one of his arms, an exaggeratedly large piece at his elbow, and a golden plate along his lower jaw. It was strange, menacing, and beautiful.

Marcan, Jack had called him. He’d been at the full-moon revel.

No, she wasn’t just standing near the Alderking’s knights, wasn’t just dressed like them. She was one of them. That was why Marcan was saying her name in concerned tones. He knew her—knew nighttime Hazel, knight Hazel, the Hazel who had served the Alderking and served him still, the one who must have been standing in her place just moments before. She remembered Marcan’s words from the revel: Hazel doesn’t mind coming with me. We’ve crossed swords before.

“I’m fine,” she said. She reached for her belt automatically, but there was no sword at her hip. Of course not; her blade was gone. She’d hidden it.

“You’re in a lot of trouble,” Marcan said under his breath. “Be careful.”

The procession halted in front of the throne of the Alderking, where he waited with his courtiers. Beside him was a casket of black metal and crystal, this one even more intricately wrought than the one that had rested in the woods. Beside it, standing with a proprietary hand on one glassy pane, stood a small wizened creature with a cloud of silver hair and a scarlet doublet. He wore intricate jeweled bracers at his wrists and a pin attached to the cloth of his shirt with wings that moved in the wind, as though a gold-and-pearl moth with gemstone eyes could be alive. Grimsen, she recalled, from Severin’s story. The blacksmith whose powers were so great that the Alderking stole him away from the old court.

Grimsen, who, with his brothers, had made Heartseeker and Heartsworn. Who could coax metals into any shape. She must have stared at him too fixedly, because he turned toward her and gave her a mendacious smile. His black eyes gleamed.

Frantically, she searched the crowd of grim courtiers for Jack—and spotted him, riding before his elf mother on a dappled faerie steed. He wore an expression that was no expression at all, a curious unreadable blankness. Her gaze rested on him, until he finally noticed. His eyes widened and he opened his palms and mimed looking down at them.

Confused, she did the same.

Her heart sped all over again. On her right, in black ink, like that of a Sharpie, were the words carrots and iron rods in the same scratchy handwriting of all the other messages. And on her left were the words Remember to kneel in a familiar hand—her own.

The first two clues were a reference to that story about the farmer and the boggart, the one she thought hadn’t made any sense. Those were the same words that had been circled in mud, but she no more understood the clue now than she had then.

And the third clue—a reminder about etiquette?

Scanning the crowd, she looked for Jack again, her eyes sweeping over a bent-backed woman holding a gnarled cane, a long-nosed green man with a shock of black hair, a golden creature with long grasshopper-like legs.

No one met her eyes. Jack wasn’t there.

“Sir Hazel,” the Alderking said. “The sun is risen and so you are no longer my little marionette.”

Several of the courtiers, some in tattered lace finery, some in nothing at all, began tittering behind hands and fans. One phooka laughed so hard that he brayed like a pony.

She closed her hands into fists, trying to fight down panic.

“Your face!” the phooka shouted, strange golden goat eyes rolling up in his head with mirth. “You should see your face!”