My gaze fell on the raven pin, glinting among the bluebells. “I will never become like you,” I said. “Never.”
Gadfly smiled down at me sadly. “What of your family?”
I raised my head, trembling now with rage as well as fear. How dare he.
“Surely,” he went on, “it would be a comfort to your aunt Emma, and your little sisters March and May, if they could see you again. Just imagine how much you could help them as a fair one.”
“Do not speak of my family.”
“Ah, but I must. Are you truly willing to leave them with no final word of resolution, no body for them to bury? Your dear aunt is so alone. Your memory would haunt her forever. She would blame herself for everything that has happened. Believe me—I know.”
“You are deliberately tormenting me. Emma would never . . . she wouldn’t . . .”
She wouldn’t want me to make this choice. I slumped in Foxglove’s grip, gazing again at the cold sparkle of the raven pin on the ground, almost close enough to touch. Gadfly had planned every excruciating moment of this awful charade. He knew I would never drink of the Green Well, no matter what he said to me, and that my torture would be the utmost spectacle. He held my fate suspended like a magician’s caged dove, ready to collapse the bars upon me and crush me at any moment. And yet . . . and yet . . . the choice remained mine, and mine alone. Gadfly might see every path through the forest, every possible split in the trail—but what about the impossible? What if I left the path and charged blindly into the wild wood, to a place where none of his visions had ever led?
I thought I knew why Foxglove had torn the circlet from my braids. I hoped I was right, because I was about to take the biggest gamble of my life, and I wasn’t fond of surprises.
“I will drink,” I whispered. Foxglove’s fingers loosened on my wrists, whether to allow me to move or out of sheer shock, I didn’t care. I dropped to my knees and groped my way over the ground, fumbling clumsily in my pain and desperation, until I’d pushed an elbow over the well’s stone lip, scraping myself on the rough edge. I cried out softly as the touch jostled my dislocated shoulder. Gadfly watched me, utterly still, his eyes narrowed. How far had I already deviated from his path? Agreeing to drink was the last thing I would ever do. And of course, I wasn’t done yet.
I stretched my good hand down into the well, cupping my fingers. The water felt like any other water, but the mere awareness of what it was sent cold shocks racing through me, and my breath shivered in and out as I lifted the shimmering palmful, which reflected the moon in broken fragments. And then, abruptly, I stopped. My arm had simply . . . stuck. My fingers were pressed together tightly, but water still trickled away, the puddle at the center of my hand dwindling.
What if just touching the water was enough to begin a transformation after all?
Rook said my name.
I raised my fearful gaze and found him watching, tensed as if prepared to spring forward. I saw the anguish of his indecision. He did not want me to make this choice, knowing that for me it was worse than death. But he also didn’t want me to die. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t betray me in one way or another. In the same stroke, I understood what had happened to me.
“Release me,” I told him gently. “Trust me.”
Rook bowed his head. The ensorcellment’s paralysis faded. I clenched my teeth and raised the cupped water until my breath sent ripples shuddering across its surface.
Then I looked over it straight at Gadfly. I turned my hand, letting the water dribble back into the well. I raised my other arm high, though my shoulder screamed with agony, though I barely felt the metal object clenched within my fist, caked with dirt and grass.
In Gadfly’s own words, I was about to discover whether Craft had the power to undo the fair folk in a way I’d never imagined. Until now.
“Go to hell,” I told him, and hurled the raven pin into the Green Well.
Nineteen
THERE CAME a collective gasp, a strange sound in the meadow’s silence, like a flock of birds all taking flight at once. Several fair folk lunged toward the well with their hands outstretched. But though they reacted with unnatural speed, none of them was fast enough to catch the raven pin before it descended, twirling and sparkling, into the well’s murky depths.
A tremor shook the ground. Instinctively everyone backed away, except Gadfly, who didn’t move. He simply stood and watched. He looked terribly old and strange, like a statue of himself. Perhaps he was replaying the things he’d said to me back in the clearing, recalling the moment he’d furnished me with the idea that Craft could destroy the Green Well.