He snapped his fingers, and the lid sprang open. Inside, upon a pillow of black velvet, lay a newly forged dagger. Its point glinted, needle-sharp.
I asked, even though I didn’t need to, “Is it iron?”
“Yes,” he said.
Whether it was due to the ensorcellment, or simply that we had grown familiar with each other, I knew we had the exact same thought simultaneously. Gadfly, standing over us at the Green Well, describing the terms of our violation and the limited means by which we might escape punishment. The way Rook had pleaded with him to end his life, and thus spare mine. He played games with us even now.
Without another word, Rook passed the box over. I wouldn’t take it, so he set it down on the cushion beside me. Our eyes locked. A silent argument raged between us. When he drew a breath to break the stalemate, I emphatically shook my head.
“No,” I said. “Stop it.”
He leapt up from his seat and knelt on the floor in front of me. He took the dagger from the box and turned it against himself. It shook so badly in his grasp he’d drop it before long, and I took cold comfort in the assurance that he couldn’t use it without help. But when his glamour flowed away I wasn’t prepared for the sight of his true self. His skin held a terrible pallor; his overlarge, queer-looking eyes were shadowed by exhaustion and pain. Sweat had left streaks in the dirt on his face.
“Listen to me,” he croaked. “Both of us need not die tonight. Isobel, you cannot break the Good Law alone. If the fair folk sense I am no more—”
I seized the dagger from him. Having no idea what to do with it afterward, I lifted the cushion I was lying on and shoved it underneath, then threw my weight back on top. “Stop being melodramatic! I am not going to kill you in my parlor!”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Did you just sit on it?”
“Yes,” I said mutinously.
“But there is no other way.”
I must have gotten quite a ferocious look on my face, because he leaned back a little. “Have you considered what it would be like for me to go on with my life after murdering you? Imagine if it were the other way around!”
He paused, and looked ill.
“Exactly!”
“No—yes—you are right. I should not have asked it of you.” His eyes flicked toward the hallway. Emma. A vise squeezed the air out of my lungs. If Rook asked Emma, she would certainly slay him to spare me, just as she would have killed the fairy beast to save her sister, if only she had had the strength. She wouldn’t let another family member die because of the fair folk.
My pulse roared in my ears. I no longer felt the settee’s cushions or the tears drying on my face. In the stories, maidens drank poison and jumped from high towers upon hearing of their princes’ deaths. But I wasn’t one of them. I still wanted to live, and in fact I had lived seventeen perfectly functional years before I’d ever met Rook. I had a family who loved me and needed me. I couldn’t ask Emma and the twins to suffer through the pain of my loss. If this was the only option . . . if this was what we had to do . . . but I couldn’t countenance it; I ached to think of him gone, a vast empty ache I couldn’t face head-on for fear of drowning in it.
His fingers stroked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It would not be like a mortal dying,” he said. “You have seen it. I will leave no body behind. There will be a tree, perhaps. A bigger one than that absurd little oak outside your kitchen.”
I couldn’t stand it. I choked on a laugh. “Show-off.”
“Yes.” He gave me half a smile. “Always.”
I twisted and dragged the dagger back out from under the cushions. I closed my eyes, squeezing the blade so tightly I almost drew blood. I pictured a version of myself, perhaps a year or two from now, walking up the hill to my house. Still grieving, but getting better every day. In my mind March and May ran out of the kitchen door to wrap themselves around my legs—no, around my waist, for surely they’d grown taller. A majestic tree dropped leaves that painted one side of the roof scarlet year-round, demonstrating an arrogant disregard for the state of our gutters. Clouds scudded across a blue sky. Heat simmered. Grasshoppers buzzed in a ceaseless, mind-numbing chorus.
I recoiled from the image. No. I couldn’t accept that world, a world where we had lost and the Alder King had won, a world where nothing ever changed, and the evidence of it surrounded me every day.
My palm stung. I blinked and the dagger came into focus, silvery against my red dress, light shivering over its surface like water. For the first time I truly understood what I had been given, and what it could do. Or rather, what it would do. Because with this understanding, I made a decision.