Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

“Jack?” Hazel said, frowning. She felt light-headed, maybe from the blood running down her arm. For a single moment, she wondered if there was some truth to it, if there was another secret yet to be revealed. Then she saw the flash of panic on his face, heard the catch in his voice.

He was buying her time. Time for her to puzzle through the clues she’d left herself.

CARROTS. IRON RODS.

REMEMBER TO KNEEL.

What did it mean? The human farmer had tricked the boggart by planting carrots underground. And the iron rods were buried as well.

Maybe she buried the sword.

“You? The boy who plays at being mortal?” The Alderking studied Jack through narrowed eyes and then moved to his throne, sweeping back his cape and sitting. “What possible reason could you have to stand against me? Your birth was proof of your mother’s betrayal and yet here you are, alive and unharmed.”

REMEMBER TO KNEEL.

“What does it matter why?” Jack said, and there was something in his expression—as though he was daring the Alderking to press him further.

“You presume much, changeling child.” The Alderking’s brows rose. “I may have promised your mother that I would order no hand raised against you, but Sorrow will welcome your pain—your death—because all she knows is pain and death and grief. Put him into the cage with my son.”

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 he was unarmed. Severin spoke. “Give me your sword,” he said to Marcan. “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. He looked at the assembled throng. They were watching him with fear and something else—something she thought might be hatred. Perhaps the Alderking could not lose with the enchanted blade in his hand, but she saw that no one would delight in his winning.

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

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

“No prince should die without a blade,” said Marcan.

Hazel 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 fast.

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 sunk into his arm, making him cry out. His grip on his own sword wavered. Each time he blocked, he was a moment too late. Already wounded, he quickly became a mess of small cuts, bleeding freely.

“As amusing as this is,” said the Alderking, “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. “It doesn’t mean I always miss you.”

The Alderking roared forward, no longer content to amuse himself with cruel, shallow cuts. 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 from a fresh cut. He’d stuck his son, but Severin had dealt him a second blow.

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

They hung back. Because they might be cruel and capricious, might care nothing for mortals, but they had their own sense of honor, Hazel realized. They were 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.

After a moment, Marcan stepped forward. They would face Severin one on one, as honor demanded. But as wounded as the horned boy was, that would be no fair fight.

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.

Half not 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, he 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.

“I love you,” Severin said, looking up, looking at nothing at all. “I love you like in the storybooks. I love you like in the ballads. I love you like a lightning bolt. I’ve loved you since the third month you came and spoke with me. I loved that you made me want to laugh. I loved the way you were kind and the way you would pause when you spoke, as though you were waiting for me to answer you. I love you and I am mocking no one when I kiss you, no one at all.”