Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

“Well, then,” he said, as though that settled everything. “Perfect. She’s not yet dead.”

He didn’t even glance in her direction. He just kept walking.

They left the road, wading through the brush. Her heart felt as if it were going to thud its way out of her chest.

The phone in her pocket buzzed, but she couldn’t risk looking at it. She felt better knowing that Ben must have received her message, that someone was going to find Amanda.

“We left you some food and stuff,” she said, trying to fill the scary silence of their walk and disguise the sound of her phone, which buzzed again. Ben must be calling her. “My brother and I, we’re on your side.”

He didn’t need to know she had doubts about his story.

A pained expression flashed across the horned boy’s face. “I am no hob or hearth spirit, to be obligated by gifts.”

“We weren’t trying to obligate you,” she said. “We were trying to be nice.”

Given the Folk’s obsession with manners, she wondered if he might feel at least a little bit bad about dragging her through the forest. She hoped he felt awful.

The horned boy bowed his head slightly, a thin smile on his face that she thought might be self-disgust. “You may call me Severin,” he said. “Now we are both nice.”

Which was as close to an apology as one of the Folk was likely to give, given that they prized their own names highly. Maybe he really did feel bad, but Hazel got the sense that it wouldn’t matter. Whatever drove him, its hooks bit deeper than courtesy.

Time slipped by as they walked, her stumbling and his walking beside her, catching her arm if she moved too far or too fast, her body still sore from crashing her bike, her mind buzzing. They plodded on until they returned to the grove.

Severin let go of her and went to the remains of the casket. “Do you know what this was? Not glass,” he told her, sliding his hand inside, running his fingers over the lining. “Nor is it crystal. Nor is it stone. It’s made of tears. Almost impossible to shatter. Made by one of the finest craftsmen in all of Faerie, Grimsen. Made to hold a monster.”

Hazel shook her head numbly. “You?”

He snorted. “No one tells the old stories anymore, do they?”

“What are we doing?” Hazel asked him.

He took a deep breath. “You need to recall who has Heartsworn. Who gave you the blade and guided your hand? Who told you how to break the casket and end the curse?”

“I can’t—”

“You can,” he said softly. He brought up one hand to her cheek. His fingers were cool against her hot skin, brushing back hair from her face. She shuddered. “For all our sakes, you must.”

She shook her head, thinking of the sword she’d found beside Wight Lake all those years ago, the one that had disappeared from beneath her bed. “Even if I had the first idea where the sword was, what makes you think I would tell you?”

“I know what you want of me,” he said, coming closer. Everything else seemed to melt away. He lifted her chin, canting her face toward his. “I know every one of your secrets. I know all your dreams. Let me persuade you.”

And, pressing her back against the blackened trunk of a tree, he kissed her. His lips were hot, his mouth sweet. And inside her, a warm, numb darkness flooded her thoughts, making her skin shiver.

Then Severin moved back from her, leaving her to smooth down the front of her pajama top.

“Benjamin Evans,” he called into the darkness. “Come out. Don’t worry about interrupting us.”

“Get the hell away from her!” Ben’s voice, shaky but determined, came from the other side of the grove.

It was the worst thing about being a redhead, Hazel thought, the way blushes splashed up onto her cheeks and down her neck until she practically felt as if her scalp were burning.

Ben stepped farther out of the shadows, looking flushed, too. He was carrying an ax their mom used sometimes to chop kindling for the stove in the art studio. “Hazel, are you okay?”

Her brother had come to save her, like in the old days. She couldn’t quite believe it.

The elf knight smiled, and there was an odd light in his eyes. He stalked toward Ben languorously, spreading his arms wide in invitation. “Going to split me open as though you were a woodsman in a fairy tale?”

“Going to try,” Ben said, but there was a quaver in his voice. He was tall and gangly, all loose limbs and freckled skin. He didn’t look dangerous. He didn’t even look like he could heft the ax without straining.

She felt a hot wave of shame that Ben had seen the horned boy kiss her, when for so long he’d been something they’d shared between them.

“Ben,” Hazel cautioned. “Ben, I’m okay. If anyone’s going to fight, it should be me.”

Her brother’s gaze flickered to her. “Because you don’t need anyone’s help, right?”

“No, that’s not—” She took a step toward him, before Severin drew his golden knife.

“It would be better if neither of you fought me,” Severin said. “You’ve got the range and your weapon may bite deeply, but I’ll wager I’m faster. So what are you to do? Will you run at me? Will you swing wildly and hope for the best?”

“Just let her come home,” Ben said. His voice shook a little, but he hadn’t backed down, not an inch. “She’s scared. It’s the middle of the night and she’s not even dressed. What do you think you’re doing, grabbing her like that?”

Severin slid a little closer, moving as lightly as a dancer. “Oh, you mean instead of grabbing you ?”

Ben flinched as though he’d been slapped. “I don’t know what you think you’re—”

“Benjamin,” Severin said, his voice dropping low. His face was inhumanly beautiful, his eyes as cold as the sky above the clouds, where the atmosphere is too thin to breathe. “I have heard every word you’ve ever said to me. Every honeyed, silver-tongued word.”

Ben’s mortified blush deepened. Hazel wanted to call to him, to say that Severin had tried the same thing on her, to tell him the same thing had worked on her, but she didn’t want to be a distraction. Ben and Severin had begun to circle each other warily.

“I’m not going away without Hazel,” Ben said, bringing his chin up. “You can’t embarrass me into leaving my own sister.”

He was going to get himself killed. He was no longer quick-fingered, no longer carrying a set of pipes hanging around his throat on a dirty string. He couldn’t play, and he’d never fought with a blade. She had to do something—she had to save Ben.

Hazel hefted the biggest stick she could find. The weight was oddly comforting in her hand, and the stance she went into was as automatic and easy as drawing breath. As soon as the fighting started, she was going to rush Severin and hopefully catch him off guard. It might not be honorable, but it had been a long time since she played at knighthood.

“Don’t be foolish,” Severin told her brother. “I was trained to a sword when I was a child. I watched my mother butchered in front of me. I have cut and I have killed and I have bled. You can’t possibly win against me.” He glanced at Hazel. “Your sister at least seems to know what she’s about. Her stance is good. Yours is abysmal.”

So much for catching him by surprise. She was just going to have to hope for dumb luck.

“If you’re going to kill me, then do it,” Ben told him. “Because if you want to take her, that’s what you’re going to have to do.”

For a frozen moment Severin brought up his blade. Their gazes caught, snagged silk on a thorn.

Hazel held her breath.

With a snort, the elf knight sheathed his knife. He shook his head, looking at Ben oddly. Then he made an elaborately formal bow, his hand nearly sweeping the ground.