Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

Hazel watched the washcloth turn pink with blood as she drew it over her arm. “I was a kid. I was stupid. What do you want me to say?”

“Why did you do it?” Ben asked. “What did you bargain for?”

On the stove, the kettle began to howl.

After a few long moments, Hazel hopped down from the counter and turned off the stove. “Back when we were hunting faeries and having adventures,” she said, turning to her brother. “I didn’t want to stop. You know I didn’t want to stop.”

She expected him to look angry, as he realized how stupid she’d been. She didn’t expect him to look afraid. “Hazel, what did you do?”

“I made a bargain so that we wouldn’t have to stop. You said that if you were better at music, we could keep going.” There was a child’s pleading in her voice and she hated it.

“You did this for me?” Ben asked, horror plain on his face.

Hazel shook her head ferociously. He’d got it all wrong. “No, I did it for me . I didn’t want to stop. I was selfish.”

“You got me that scholarship. That was you.” His voice had dropped low. He almost sounded as though he was saying the words to himself.

“Ben…”

“What was the exact nature of this bargain?” Severin asked, his cool indifference a relief.

“I promised that I would give up seven years of my life. I thought it meant I would just die sooner. Like years of life were something they would shave off the end and bottle up somehow.”

Severin nodded, his expression grim.

Ben didn’t look as if he thought dying seven years too soon made for a better bargain. He looked like he wanted to shake her. Hazel wished she could just stop talking. She wished she could make all her mistakes go away.

“That’s why you wouldn’t tell me any of this,” he said.

“That’s why I wouldn’t tell you any of this. It doesn’t matter why I did it. And anyway, I obviously ruined everything that was supposed to happen in Philadelphia anyway. I ruined it and it doesn’t matter what I intended, because I ruined it.”

“What are you talking about?” He was staring at her as though he really had no idea.

“You know what I did.” She hated having to explain. She hated that Jack was looking at her, all concern, and how differently he’d see her once he realized what she’d done. He’d said that anyone who offered up their heart on a silver platter deserved what they got, but he was wrong.

“Hazel, what you did ? You mean when Kerem kissed you?”

“Obviously that’s what I mean,” Hazel bit out.

Ben threw up his hands, exasperated. “That’s not what you did—that’s what he did, because he was a jerk and he was thirteen and totally confused about everything. He was freaking out. Look, I’ve talked to him on Facebook and he’s fine now. He’s got a boyfriend, he’s out, his parents came around. But back then he was freaking out and his parents were freaking out and he wanted to prove he didn’t like me. You were there. That’s all.”

“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, he 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 an ivory 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?”