Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

At some point, the sun rose, turning the grass to gold.

Hazel’s parents found her kneeling on the lawn later that morning when they stumbled out of the house, hung over and panicked at discovering her not in her bed. Mom was still in her dress from the night before, makeup smeared across her cheek. Dad was in a T-shirt and underwear, walking barefoot on the frost-covered grass.

“What are you doing out here?” Dad said, clasping Hazel’s shoulder. “Have you been out all night? Jesus, Hazel, what were you thinking?”

She tried to stand, but her legs were too stiff. She couldn’t feel her fingers. As her father lifted her up into his arms, she wanted to explain, but her teeth were chattering too loudly for her to get any words out.

And she remembered another night, too, slinking home through the woods after being in the Alderking’s service, a shudder never quite leaving her shoulders.

She had ridden with the Folk and pretended to laugh as they tormented mortals, aped their cruelty along with all else they taught her.

Let us curse them to be rocks until some mortal recognizes their true nature.

Now, a cold knot in her stomach, she knew she was the best hope of breaking the curse. It should have been simple; all she had to do was go out to the grove where they were and their true nature would be recognized. She would recognize them.

But only if she remained her night self. Her day self wouldn’t know.

Briefly, she imagined leaving a note for Ben. Maybe if she worded it right, he could break the spell. But no matter how she worded it, he would probably say just the wrong thing to her day self—a self she wasn’t sure she trusted.

Day Hazel was her, but with all the sharp edges blunted. Day Hazel didn’t know what it was to ride beside the Folk on sleek faerie horses, hair streaming behind her. She didn’t recall swinging a silvery sword with such force that the air itself seemed to sing. She didn’t know what it was to outwit them and to be outwitted. She hadn’t seen the wild and grotesque things Night Hazel had seen. She hadn’t told the many, many lies.

Day Hazel needed to be preserved, protected. There would be no help there.

And so she concocted a plan. The terms of her service were simple. Every night, from the moment you fall into slumber until your head touches your pillow again near dawn, you’re mine , the Alderking had said.

The way she thwarted him was simple, too. She put her head down on her pillow but didn’t allow herself to sleep. Instead, she got back up again—and stayed Night Hazel until dawn broke on the horizon and her memories fled with the dark.

Some nights, she was able to steal almost an hour. Other nights, mere moments. But it allowed her to break curses, to undo damage.

And, in time, it let her concoct a plan.

She knew what the Alderking intended to do with Sorrow. He flaunted Fairfold’s looming destruction before her, boasted about his plans for conquest and revenge on the Court in the East. Just as he let slip details he hadn’t thought mattered, about his lost sword and the means of releasing the horned boy. Slowly, Hazel had realized the value of the blade she had found all those years ago. Slowly, she had come to see that she was the only one with the means to stop him.

I may be stuck in his service , Hazel had thought, but if I free the prince, he could defeat his father. He’s not bound by any promises. He’s got enough vengeance in him for both of us.

That was when everything went wrong. Hazel remembered the panic that rose in her when the casket shattered, but the prince didn’t wake. She remembered the terror of trying to hide the sword, of leaving herself hasty, cryptic hints and then rushing to her bed before the first rays of light touched her.

She’d thought she’d have more time, but she had stolen only minutes when she woke next, until finally she’d awakened in her own house, with her brother and Jack and Severin standing over her and half the Alderking’s court outside.

“Where is it?” Ben asked her.

That was when the first of the faeries burst through the front door. Hazel scrabbled for the Sharpie and ran up the stairs to don her armor.

Hazel remembered all those things, slumped on the ground, as Ben told her they’d won, as Severin ordered his father’s body moved to the casket, where he could sleep away all the rest of his days, as the court crowded around the monster, as Jack said Hazel’s name over and over, until the words bled together.

She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.

CHAPTER 22

Hazel woke up in an unfamiliar place, the air redolent with honeysuckle and carrying the distant playing of a harp. She was lying in a large, elaborate, carved bed with a silvery gray blanket over her that felt lighter than silk, but was warmer than goose down. She wanted to burrow back down in the coverlets and go on sleeping, although she knew there was some reason why she shouldn’t.

She turned over and saw Jack, sitting so that he was in profile. He was in a tipped-back chair, balancing it with a single booted foot against the wall. He had a book open on his lap, but he didn’t seem to be turning the pages. There was something in the way the soft light of the candles resting beside him defined the planes of his face, something in the heavy lash of his eye and the softness of his mouth that was both familiar and endlessly strange in its beauty.

Hazel realized that as many times as she’d seen Jack before, she’d never really got to look at him with night Hazel’s eyes.

Who was she? Hazel wondered. Knowing what she did, having done what she had done? Was she enough of the Hazel Evans he’d liked? Was she even a Hazel Evans she herself could like?

Once her service to the Alderking was complete, if he hadn’t tricked her into becoming his eternal servant or killed her outright, she’d assumed he’d take back all her memories of her time in his court. She’d thought of her night self as expendable, thought of what she’d endured as being scars that would simply, one day, vanish.

Now she knew they wouldn’t. But the Alderking had left her with talents, too. And knowledge.

She’d heard the story of how Jack came be a changeling so many times as her daylight self, but as she watched him, she realized she’d heard it in the faerie court, too. She’d heard his elf mother tell it, explaining how she’d chosen Carter because he was such a beautiful child, warm and sweet and laughing in her arms. Telling of the horror of the hot iron scorching Jack’s skin, the smell of burning flesh and the howl he’d given up, so anguished that a banshee would despair to hear it. How the mortals were indifferent to his pain and kept him for spite, for a curiosity to show off to their friends, how she feared they would make him the servant of their own son. Hazel had heard stories of the way the hobs would peer in the windows, making sure he was safe, how they would pile up acorns and chestnuts outside in case he got hungry at night, how they would play with him in the garden when his human mother’s back was turned and pinch Carter until he cried.

Thinking of that, Hazel took a breath and got ready to turn over and speak, when she heard someone come into the room.

“I have sent you a dozen messages,” Eolanthe said. “You have deigned to reply to none.”

“I’ve been here.” Jack closed the book and set it down beside the candles. “You knew I was here. You could have come to speak with me anytime—as you have.”