Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

And then Hazel understood. Ben was taking her through the storm of grief. He was singing her through the rage and despair. He was singing her through the terrible loneliness, because there was no way to shut off grief, no way to cast it aside or fight against it. The only way to end grief was to go through it.

As she realized that, his song began to change. It grew softer, sweeter, like the morning after a long cry, when your head still hurt, but your heart was no longer broken. Like flowers blooming on a grave. One by one, around the room, the weeping stopped.

The monster grew still.

Ben ceased his singing. He slumped down onto the piano bench, exhausted. Reaching up, his mother twined her fingers with his. Mom was still crying.

For a moment there was only silence. Sorrow looked around her with her strange knothole black eyes, as though waking from a long dream. Severin pushed himself to his feet and walked to her.

She stared down at him, reached out with her long twig fingers. This time she seemed conscious, aware. Her expression was unreadable. Hazel had no idea whether she would strike at him or not.

He reached up a hand and touched her mossy cheek. For a moment the monster leaned into his touch, almost nuzzling. Then, pulling away, she clomped out through the doorway, past the smashed furniture and stunned townsfolk and was gone.

CHAPTER 19

Hazel dropped the saber. It made an echoing clang. Her knuckles felt bruised. Everything felt bruised, but at least her bones were intact. The sitting room of the Gordons’ house was a mess of broken frames, ottomans ripped open, leaves and dirt strewn across the scratched wood floor.

A woman was moaning from one of the corners. Someone else was weeping, sobs that no longer sounded forced from her throat. She was crying all on her own.

“We need the monster’s blood,” Jack said to her from the floor, where he was cradling an unconscious Carter. Hazel turned toward him, startled, because he wasn’t normally so vicious. Seeing her expression, he shook his head. “That’s what you said would wake these people up, what’s going to fix Carter. We need her blood .”

Hazel nodded. Of course. That was what the Alderking had told her. It was a puzzle, the math kind you got in school: To get the blood of a monster, you need a magical sword; to get a magical sword, you need to know whom your secret night self is in league with; to know whom your secret night self is in league with, you need to know who’d want to free Severin; to know who’d want to free Severin, you needed…

“Come,” said Ben. His voice sounded low and rough, as though he’d hurt it singing as he had. He reached out a hand toward Jack, gripping his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. We’re all looking for the same thing now, and we don’t have much time to find it.”

“Heartsworn,” Severin said. He nodded toward Hazel, a dip of his head, an acknowledgment. “You fought well.”

Instinct had propelled her into moving in a way she hadn’t known she could. So long as she didn’t think too much. The moment she considered why she was holding the blade at a certain angle or what she was going to do next, she’d faltered, all the momentum gone out of her. Fear had done a pretty good job of keeping her attention on the present, but now that she wasn’t scared, she couldn’t make her body do any more tricks.

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; 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.”