Rook stopped in his tracks. He turned his face to the side, presenting me with a view of his profile, though he didn’t quite look at me, as if unwilling to take his eyes off something else. “Once we’re in the forest,” he said, “do not speak those words. Do not even think them.”
A chill gripped me. The only thing I knew about the Alder King was that he was the lord of the summer court and he had ruled fairykind forever. His influence spread far, locking Whimsy in its eternal summer. In that moment it seemed the trees were leaning together, whispering. Waiting for me to walk past those rusty, crooked nails and walk beneath their boughs, so they could watch and listen. I’d almost reached the edge of my yard, and felt as though I were about to step beyond a pool of lantern light into an endless darkness crawling with horrors. No, I didn’t just feel like it—I was.
I couldn’t scream. If Emma ran outside I had no idea what might happen to her, and the idea of the twins seeing this sickened me. But I couldn’t just march after him like an unresisting puppet, either, straight into the shadowy forest ahead.
Swallowing hard, I bunched my skirts in my hands and gave his back an awkward top-only curtsy.
He spun on his heel and bowed, glaring as though he might kill me on the spot. As soon as he’d turned around and taken another step, I curtsied again. We repeated this odd ritual four times, his expression growing increasingly furious, before I felt the charm controlling my legs creep farther up my body, petrifying my waist to the rigidity of a porcelain doll’s. So much for that plan.
We plunged into the field. Wheat swished all around me, tickling and scratching, catching on the rough fabric of my clothes. When I looked over my shoulder I saw no lights on in the house. Was this the last time I’d ever see my home? My family? The silver-lined shingles and eaves, the big old oak by the kitchen door were suddenly so dear to me that tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. Rook didn’t notice my distress. Would he care at all if he saw me weeping? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to find out.
I flexed my fingers. Good—my arms were still free. I found the pocket hidden among my skirts’ loose folds and started picking at a seam with my fingernails.
“Rook, wait,” I said. Another hot tear skated down my cheek and dripped inside my collar. “If you care anything for me at all, or ever did, stop for a moment and let me compose myself.”
His pace slowed, dwindled to a halt. My own marching didn’t wear off until I stood close behind him, which was exactly what I’d hoped for.
“I—” he began, but I didn’t get a chance to hear what he’d been about to say.
I seized his hand and squeezed it tight, making sure the ring I’d picked out of my pocket seam pressed against his bare skin. It wasn’t just any ring. It was forged from cold, pure iron.
He swayed where he stood, as though the ground had dropped out beneath him. Then he tore his hand from mine and started back, rounding on me with his teeth bared in a feral snarl. My stomach lurched. Over the years, observing the individual imperfections in each fair one’s glamour, I’d put together a picture of what they looked like underneath. As it turned out, I still wasn’t prepared for the sight.
In his true form Rook resembled some hellish creature spawned from the forest’s heart—not hideous, precisely, but terrifyingly inhuman. The life had leached from his golden skin, leaving him a sickly tallow gray, with hollow cheeks and hair that tangled about his face like the shadows cast by a briar thicket. His luminous eyes reminded me of a hawk’s, soul-piercing and devoid of mercy or feeling. His fingers were uncanny in their length and jointedness, and I could tell by the way his clothes hung from him that he had grown gaunt as a skeleton beneath them. Worst of all were his teeth, each one needle-sharp behind his peeled-back upper lip.
Almost instantly his returning glamour filled in his cheeks, tamed his hair, and brought color to his ashen face, but the frightful image had been seared into my memory forever.
“How dare you use iron against me,” he rasped, agony strangling each syllable. “You know as well as I that it’s outlawed in Whimsy. I should kill you where you stand.”
I struggled to keep my voice steady while my heart flung itself against my ribs. “I know your kind is bound by your word. You value fairness highly. If you were to slay me for carrying iron, would it not be fair and necessary to carry out the same punishment toward anyone else guilty of an identical offense?”
He hesitated. Staring at me, he nodded.