“Isobel,” he panted.
I couldn’t turn far enough in Hemlock’s grasp to look at him. “What’s going to happen?”
“I cannot say. Some mortals fall ill, and others go mad. Do not dwell on the things you see. Keep your eyes closed if you can.”
Most of the other fair folk reached the riven stone before we did. They slipped into the space between the cracked boulder and simply didn’t emerge on the other side. I strained for any hint of what was about to befall me, but saw nothing other than a perfectly ordinary stone.
“Do be dears and watch him closely,” Hemlock said to Rook’s detainers over her shoulder. “He is still a prince, with a prince’s power, and I shall be quite cross if he attempts something on the way. Put this on him.” She tossed a crumpled-up handkerchief to Swallowtail, who cried out and almost dropped it.
“This is iron!” And indeed, gleaming coldly within Gadfly’s monogrammed linen was my own ring.
“Oh, cease your whining. You needn’t touch it yourself. Just slip it on, quickly now.”
“But—”
Hemlock’s smile widened. Swallowtail hurriedly seized Rook’s sword hand and crammed the ring onto his little finger, the only one it would fit. Rook braced himself, his chin raised defiantly. At first he didn’t react. He stood glaring at Hemlock, proud despite having his arms twisted behind his back and his glamour melting away, hollowing the planes of his face, making a wild, feral tangle of his hair. I had grown used to his false appearance again, and felt a visceral shock at the sight. Just as I began to hope that he could somehow bear the iron’s touch, a muscle moved in his cheek. He wavered on his feet, listing forward drunkenly. A moan tore from his throat, a deep, raw, almost animal sound.
I couldn’t bear seeing him in such agony. I jerked toward him, but Hemlock used my own momentum to swing me around and shove me bodily through the riven stone.
I did not have time to close my eyes.
The first thing I saw, staring upward, was stars. There were too many of them. Pinwheels of light, burning cold and vast, spiraled in a black void without end. The longer I stared, the more I felt I’d never truly been aware of the night sky before, nor had I possessed an accurate understanding of my own insignificance in the face of its enormity. The void between the stars wasn’t empty as it first appeared, but rather filled with more and more stars, and each gap in those had more and more, too, and then—
“Don’t look.” The words grated painfully beside me, such a wretched sound that at first I didn’t recognize Rook as the speaker. I surfaced as though dragged up from drowning, and groped blindly in the direction of his voice until he took my hand. I lowered my gaze from the terrible, infinite sky. But I could not obey him. I could not look away from what I saw next.
A road stretched before us and behind us. The fair folk cavorted along it in a line, pale forms flickering like sepulchral flames, a procession of ghosts. The forest rose on either side of the path, but it wasn’t the same forest that existed in the world we had been in before. The trees were as big around as houses. Roots rose from the ground at such a height I wouldn’t have been able to climb them if I’d tried. The fair folks’ white luminosity cast flitting shadows across the bark.
While I stumbled forward, years raced around me. Mushrooms erupted from the soil, withered, and tumbled over. More grew in their place. Leaves swarmed onto the branches and fell, new buds already twitching and swelling in their place. Moss raced across the ground like sea-foam, surging and retracting in different shades of green. A fawn picked its way shyly from the undergrowth, only to undergo a strange spasm and then fall dead to the ground, a stag with a gray-furred muzzle and full set of antlers. By the time I passed it, its skeleton was half sunk into the ground, absorbed by layers of decaying leaves that rippled as they consumed it, like devouring maggots.
How many years had passed already? Twenty? Thirty? Fear overtook me. I rounded upon my hand in Rook’s, expecting to find my skin wrinkled and spotted with age. But it was the same. Wasn’t it? The light was so odd—I couldn’t trust anything I saw . . .
“Think of it,” Rook forced out, “as an illusion. When we leave the path, only seconds will have passed. You will not be changed. Not in any physical way.”
His hand shone with eerie light. I almost thought I saw the outline of my own showing through it, and the ring seemed to cast a shadow through his finger. I dragged my gaze upward—
“No,” he rasped.