Jack took a deep breath and then half smiled, allowing himself to be forced back from Hazel, toward the cage. Despair flooded her. They were all going to die. She wanted nothing more than to sink down onto the cold stone and beg, offer up anything, everything. But she had nothing to offer.

Carrots. Iron rods.

Remember to kneel.

Then she realized what the answer must be. She knew where she’d hidden the sword.

Heartsworn, a blade that could cut through anything, a blade so sharp that it could be sheathed in stone itself. And that’s where she must have hidden it, just as she first found it, buried blade deep in the dirt and sand beside Wight Lake. The Alderking would no more look for it paving the ground of his throne room than he would look for it among the clouds.

Remember to kneel.

Her gaze dropped to the floor, looking for any shine in the dirt between the massive stone tiles. She spotted what she thought might be a shimmer, but it could have been a trick of the light. She had one chance to find it.

Three knights in gleaming gold marched Jack to the cage and gingerly opened the door. As it swung wide, though, Severin ducked down, rolling under the swords knights pushed through the bars to hold him back. He’d clearly been anticipating them, and he moved fast. Fast enough that by the time they’d pulled their swords out to face him, he was through and straightening up.

Wounded from whatever fight had taken place earlier, he wore the ripped and bloodstained remains of a shirt wrapped around his waist—Jack’s undershirt, she realized.

The knights who had been standing near Hazel ran toward Severin, swords flashing. Hazel had her chance. She crossed quickly to where she thought she’d seen a glimmer of the hilt.

Then, despite herself, she looked back toward the cage.

The knights had surrounded Severin, none of them bold enough to come at him, despite the fact that he was unarmed. Severin spoke. “Give me your sword,” he said to Marcan. He looked like the prince of Hazel’s childhood, the one who was going to wake up and make everything right. “Give me your sword and let me die with a blade in my hands. I don’t want to fight any of you and my father has Heartseeker. You can hardly fear for him. Surely, he will fight me. I cannot win.”

The courtiers looked from one to another, a nervous energy taking hold of them.

The Alderking stood, drawing Heartseeker from his sheath with a terrible scrape of metal on metal. He looked at the assembled throng. They were watching with eagerness and something else—something she thought might be hatred. The Alderking could not lose with the enchanted blade in his hand, but no one would delight in his winning.

“Take mine,” Marcan said, and placed his sword in Severin’s hand.

“I didn’t give you leave to arm him,” the Alderking snapped.

“No prince should die for want of a sword,” said Marcan, a muscle moving in his jaw. It was no safe thing to lecture a king.

The Alderking sneered. “And yet so many do.”

But even with a faerie-wrought blade, Severin would die. Even were he the best swordsman in the world, he would die. No skill could guard against a blade that never missed. If Hazel couldn’t get him Heartsworn, he was doomed.

She found what she thought might be the shine of the bottom of a pommel and dropped to her knees. Fingers sliding over it, she tried to get a grip, tried to pull it up. It slipped from her fingers. No one had noticed her yet, crouched there, but they would, surely. She had to work quickly.

On the other side of the floor, Severin and his father circled each other. Heartseeker darted out toward Severin’s shoulder. The horned boy tried to block the blow, but the other sword was too fast. It sank into his arm, making him cry out. His grip on his own sword wavered. Metal rang against metal in a flurry of furious blows. Severin couldn’t block swiftly enough. Again and again, Heartseeker sliced into his flesh. Already wounded, he quickly became a mess of small cuts, bleeding freely.

And yet, Hazel could tell the Alderking was frustrated. Severin was clearly the better swordsman. The Alderking was constantly thrown off his balance by his own sword; it jerked him into the position it needed to strike. He dealt sloppy blows, blows that went wide and then corrected themselves. And Severin continued on, relentlessly parrying, ferociously striking, even when there was no hope of winning out, even when his defeat was assured. The Alderking might be able to kill him, but he could not break him.

“As amusing as this is,” said the Alderking, out of breath, “it cannot continue. Subside. Your sister is coming. She will rip you limb from limb if I don’t cut your throat first. Either way, this time when you lie in the glass coffin, you will truly be dead, dead and on display for all the rest of the forest.”

Severin slashed his blade at his father’s side and hit, slicing through fabric to show a thin line of welling blood. The Alderking looked at his son as though seeing him for the first time.

“Heartseeker means you never miss, Father,” Severin said, circling again. “It doesn’t mean I always miss you.”

The Alderking roared forward, heedless of form. Abruptly, brutally, he thrust Heartseeker into Severin’s gut. The horned boy howled and fell to his knees, hand pressed to his stomach. The Alderking had stabbed him where he was already wounded.

But as the Alderking stepped back, his hand went to his own arm. It was bleeding freely, the red wash of blood covering his hand like a glove. He’d struck his son, but Severin had dealt him another blow.

“Enough,” the Alderking shouted, breathing hard, pointing to his knights. “Finish him.”

They stood rigidly, as though they hadn’t heard the command. Because they might be cruel and capricious, might care nothing for mortals, but they were still knights, like the kind in books she’d read when she was little. Knights, like in Ben’s stories. What the Alderking was asking was against their code of honor. They did not swarm a wounded man, certainly not one who’d been so clearly beaten in no kind of fair fight.

After a moment, Marcan stepped forward. One of the others pressed a blade into his hand. They seemed to have come to the decision that though they were bound to follow the Alderking’s orders, they would do so facing Severin one-on-one, as honor demanded.

Hazel finally caught hold of the edge of the sword. She pushed her fingers deeper into the ground, as far as they would go, hooking her nail beneath the metal and insinuating her fingers until she could grip it. Carefully, she pulled the sword up, up from the stone where she’d buried it, up through the deep slice in the rock. Up until it was in her hand.

Her sword, the golden blade gleaming, black paint long chipped off. The one she’d borne on her back. The one that had made her a knight. Heartsworn.

Hardly believing what she’d done, she took several steps toward Severin, realizing in that moment that she was too late. He was bleeding too freely from too many wounds. As Marcan circled him, Severin stumbled. He was barely on his feet. He couldn’t wield the blade and win against his father, no less his fearsome sister.

She had failed. She was too late.

“Ben,” Severin called as he slumped to the ground. “Benjamin Evans, you’re wrong, but you’re not stupid.”

“What?” Ben called back from where he stood, at the edge of the cage, the broken fingers of his hands curling around the bars. His gaze flickered between Severin and Hazel, as though he wasn’t sure whom he feared for more.