The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, faintly, because she honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say. She didn’t remember much past the press of the elf girl’s mouth, past her lips parting and the taste of honey and wine. Everything else was blank blackness.

  “Don’t apologize,” Jack told her, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I’m not—I’m not myself. Don’t listen to me right now.”

  Hazel pushed herself up into a sitting position and looked around. Her dizziness and blurriness were receding a little. “How did we get here?” she asked, not recognizing the stretch of forest. “Did we walk?”

  “I carried you,” he said, with a lopsided smile.

  She must have been horribly heavy, like a sack of flour with the ability to drool. And although she hadn’t imagined she could be more humiliated, it turned out that no matter how far you fall, there’s always a lower place.

  “Thanks,” she said, trying not to cringe. Then she remembered the Folk didn’t like being thanked. She’d never thought of Jack as someone to whom their rules applied before, but after the revel, she was forced to think differently. “Sorry.” That was the third sorry, and she was tempted to follow it up with a fourth and a fifth, a litany of sorrysorrysorry.

  “Hazel,” he said with a vast sigh. “I’m not mad, okay?”

  “Okay.” She didn’t believe him, but there was no point in arguing. She flopped back down.

  Her feet were wet, her boots sodden. She couldn’t remember how they got that way, but she could guess. Underground lake. She wanted to kick them off, but she also wanted to stay where she was, lying on her back and feeling sorry for herself.

  Jack sat down on a root beside her. He’d lost his coat somewhere, and the front of his shirt was a little ripped, as though someone had pulled it too hard. “Not mad at you, anyway. I was pissed at myself.”

  “Why?” she asked, snorting with disbelief. “I knew the rules and I broke them.”

  “You acted the way every human acts when given faerie wine. Every human, since the world began. I should have stopped you. I saw what you were doing and what she was doing, and I was caught up in the moment and I didn’t do a damn thing. Sometimes when I’m with them, I feel like a different person. A different creature entirely from a person. But you—you were supposed to be under my protection. I didn’t behave well, and then yelling at you—well, I haven’t behaved myself at all. Both of my mothers would have me beg your pardon. I’m sorry, Hazel.”

  A trace of the way they spoke was still in his voice. It made him sound, oddly, more like himself. It was the way that sleepy people sometimes slipped back into an accent they no longer possessed when fully awake.

  Light was filtering through the trees, warming the ferns and grass around her. Overhead, birds were calling to one another, and beside her, the scents of crushed brambles filled the air.

  Dawn was coming.

  “I’m fine,” she said, reaching out to tug at his hand. He flopped down beside her.

  “No thanks to me,” he said.

  “Many thanks to you, and still, fine. I had an adventure.” She sighed. “But the Alderking told me something. He said that I had to bring him Severin.”

  “Severin?” Jack echoed.

  “The prince,” Hazel said. “I’ve got two days. If I don’t manage to do it, the Alderking said that he’d send his people against the town.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “When you spoke to him, you told me you didn’t find out anything.”

  “I lied,” Hazel said, with a twist of her mouth.

  He didn’t look angry. Instead, he seemed intrigued. “Why?”

  Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. What was that from? It echoed in her head, a bit of nursery rhyme logic. She took a deep breath and tried to be as honest as she could. “I didn’t want to see the look on your face, because I was sure you’d be horrified—you do look kind of horrified now—and I’d have to admit how screwed we all are.”

  “You don’t have to do this alone,” Jack said, turning full onto his back and looking up at the lightening sky over the tops of the trees.

  Hazel remembered what it had been like to have a partner, back when she believed there was nothing so terrible that Ben would back down from it, back when she thought her job was to be a knight. Ben’s knight. The one who held the blade, who went out in front, keeping him safe so he could save everybody else and tell the tale. “You don’t have to say that,” she told him.

  “If I had to say it, it wouldn’t mean much.” His grin was quick. “But I’ve been thinking. Why would the Alderking single you out? Why believe that you could bring him Severin? And why aren’t you asking those questions, too? Hazel, what aren’t you telling me?”

  “What do you mean?” Hazel said, stalling. Her heart beat triple-time. Jack was clever, clever enough to figure out that she’d omitted things, maybe even to guess at what she’d omitted.

  The idea that someone could see through what she wasn’t saying, could guess at her secrets, tempted her to tell him everything. She was so tired of being alone. “I’m freaking out. My heart is beating a million miles an hour. Feel it. Here, give me your hand.”

  He shook his head, but then he seemed to relent, letting her take his fingers and press them against her skin. His palm opened, cool and careful over her heart.

  “Anyone would be freaked out,” he said. “That’s normal.”

  “I never wanted to be normal,” Hazel told him softly, and it was an ache in her to admit that to someone who’d probably never felt that way. Then, even softer, she said, “Distract me.”

  “Distract you?” He regarded her from beneath half-lidded eyes, hand still against her chest.

  “What?” she asked, smiling without quite intending to. She couldn’t read his expression, but she could read the way his body bent toward hers.

  “You really want me to…?”

  “More than anything,” Hazel said, soft and sure.

  Leaning over, not speaking, he brought his mouth to hers. For a wild moment she wondered if he wanted her. Her and not just this.

  At first, the kiss seemed part of the night and the dancing, full of dreamy madness. Jack kissed her as though he only could reassure himself she was awake and okay so long as they were touching. He kissed her as though he thought she’d turn to smoke the moment he stopped.

  She rolled toward him, and his arm came around her, pressing her closer, his fingers against the small of her back. Everything felt liquid and slow. As her hands fumbled with his shirt, trying to get it up and over his broad shoulders, as she pressed her cheek against smooth brown skin, and as he made a soft sound in the back of his throat that seemed to be his way of holding in check some other, less polite sound that Hazel desperately wanted to hear, she couldn’t help thinking of how strange it was to be doing this with a friend.

  She pulled back, looking at him, his mouth swollen, his breaths ragged. His eyes were closed.

  “Hazel,” he started to say, and she realized that whatever it was he was about to tell her, she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want apologies and she didn’t want excuses and she didn’t want to stop.

  She kissed him, pushing him back against the ground, and then kissed him some more for good measure. His hands came up and under the back of her shirt, clever fingers sliding over her ribs. He looked obscene and filthy and gorgeous with his jeans undone and pushed low on his hips. With her hands splayed over his stomach and his hips canted toward her.

  “Hazel,” he said again, and this time he put his hands against her shoulders to keep her a slight distance from him. He said the words slowly at first, as though it was hard for him to concentrate, but once he began speaking, the rest tumbled out in a rush. “Hazel, I just want to say that I like you. And I mean… maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t know if you’d do this with me if you knew that. I kind of think you wouldn’t, so that’s why I’m telling you. But if you want to keep doing whatever we’re doing, then I am fully prepared
to shut up now.”

  Hazel’s face went blank; she could feel the momentary pause where her panic showed. And even though she tried to smile to cover it, it was too late. He knew her way better than she thought. Way better than she was comfortable with being known.

  Jack nodded once, sliding his hands over her to try to zip up his pants.

  “You like me?” she asked, needing him to say those words again, so she could be sure he meant them the way he had seemed like he did.

  Weirdly, that made Jack put his hand to his face, rubbing over his eyes and cheek. “Yeah. You’re surprised? I feel like everyone guessed. I mean, why do you think Carter is always giving you shit?”

  “I don’t know,” Hazel said. “Not because of that!”

  He looked at her with an expression she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen on his face before, hungry and a little desperate. “I thought about kissing you so many times at parties. I imagined pressing you back against the bark of a tree, shoving aside those boys you didn’t care anything about. I thought you might like the laugh of it, me being your brother’s best friend and all.”

  “You think I want to hurt Ben?”

  Jack shrugged. “I think both of you always want a little bite of whatever the other person’s got, that’s all.”

  It unnerved her, how not wrong he was. “So why didn’t you, then? Why not kiss me?”

  His laugh was a soft huff of breath. “The last thing I need is another thing to pretend about. I didn’t want to act like I didn’t have feelings for you when I did. But, I mean, I’ve liked you for a long while. My mother once—she showed me a girl wearing your face.”

  Hazel shifted away from Jack, so she could concentrate on what he was saying without the heat of his body clouding her thoughts. “Wearing my face?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, you know that my people can glamour themselves to appear in different forms. They were messing with me.” He frowned. “Hazel? What’s going on.”

  Nausea twisted her stomach.

  “Hazel?” Jack repeated, louder this time. He waved his hand in front of her face. “Look, I didn’t mean to completely freak you out. We can forget about what I said.”

  “It’s not that,” she told him softly, putting her clothes back together. “I have something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you before.”

  He waited, shifting so she could sit upright.

  He’d guessed enough about her that she hoped he’d understand why she’d hidden the rest. Before she could think better of it, Hazel started talking.

  She told him everything. From hunting with her brother, to her bargain, to waking up with mud on her feet and shards of crystal in her palm, from the riddles to the monster to the whole of what the Alderking said that night.

  Jack was looking at her in amazement. “So he told you that you’ve been serving him this whole time? As a knight?”

  She sighed. “I guess it sounds stupid when you—”

  That was when Jack grabbed a long stick from the ground. With a howl, he leaped up and swung it at her.

  Startled, she reacted without thinking. She kicked him in the stomach and wrenched the branch out of his hand in a move so fluid that it felt as though it was happening all at once. He went down in the dirt and leaves and pine needles with a groan. She took a step forward, turning the stick unconsciously, stopping herself just before she stabbed down at him with it.

  Rolling onto his back, astonished, he started to laugh.

  “Are you crazy?” Hazel yelled at him. “What were you doing? Why are you laughing?”

  He shook his head, one hand on his stomach, the other propping him halfway up. “I don’t know. I thought we’d figure out if maybe—ow, that really hurt. Obviously he was telling the truth. You’ve had some training.”

  She stuck out her hand to pull him to his feet. “Are you okay?”

  “Bruised, but I deserved it,” he said, staggering up. “What a brilliant plan that was, huh?”

  “So you had no idea that I was his knight? That wasn’t one of the things you were forbidden from warning me about?”

  Jack shook his head. “If I’d known, I’d have told you. I’d have found a way. Hazel, I swear it. ”

  Hazel smiled, despite herself. “I just—I’m afraid I ruined everything,”

  “That’s not possible,” he told her, squeezing her fingers. “Not everything’s ruined, so you must not have ruined everything.”

  For a moment Jack looked like he was going to say something more, and she could see the moment he decided to say something else instead. “Come on, what we both need is some sleep. And if we don’t go now, we’re not going to be able to sneak into our houses.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Hazel had so much to puzzle through that sleep sounded enormous and good. Just turning everything off for a while was the best thing she could imagine.

  They walked together until they got to the edge of the woods near Jack’s house and crossed the lawn. Pale, buttery light was just beginning to filter through the trees in the east.

  “You okay to get home?” Jack asked. The memory of touching him haunted her. The scent of him was in her lungs, and her fingers itched to brush over his skin again, to reassure herself that he’d still smile, that he still liked her. “I can walk you back.”

  Hazel shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

  He stepped away from her, hands in his pockets, with a final vague smile. “See you in a couple of hours.”

  Then the back door of the Gordon house opened and his mother stepped out in a blue fuzzy robe. She was barefoot and had a silk scarf tied over her hair. “Carter! Get in here right—Jack?”

  They both looked at her, too shocked to move, no less answer.

  “Jack!” she said, walking across the lawn toward them. “I would have believed this of your brother, but not you. And Hazel Evans. What would your mother say about you spending all night out with a boy…” Her words trailed off as she got a better look at them.

  Hazel’s face heated.

  “Where were you?” Ms. Gordon demanded.

  “You know,” Hazel said, quickly. “Like you said. Spending the night.”

  “In the woods? With a full moon in the sky?” She said the words more softly, as if speaking more to herself than them. Then she turned fully toward Jack. “You brought her to them? How could you?”

  Jack took a step back, as though her words were a physical blow.

  “Do you know what they’re saying about you in town? That all this is happening because of you.”

  “But that doesn’t make—” Hazel began.

  Ms. Gordon held up her hand, cutting off Hazel’s words. “Enough, both of you. Jack, you get on out of here. You can’t come inside right now. You’re going to go off to the Evanses or someplace you think you can stay for a while. And you’re not to come back until I say so. Do you understand?”

  Hazel never thought Ms. Gordon would ever kick Jack out, not for anything. Ground him, sure. Make him do extra chores or take away his cell phone or dock his allowance, but not this. Not throw him out of her house like he’d never been her son.

  There was a muscle moving in Jack’s jaw and his eyes shone too brightly, but he didn’t protest, didn’t beg. He didn’t even explain himself. He just nodded, once. Then he turned away and started walking, leaving Hazel to run after him.

  “We’ll go to my house,” she said.

  He nodded.

  Together, without speaking, they walked, keeping to the edge of the road. The early-morning air felt good in Hazel’s lungs, and although her legs still ached from dancing, it was reassuring to put one foot in front of the other on the asphalt. The sun was rising fast, hot on her back, but it was still too early for many cars to be out, so she veered to walk on the center line of the street. Jack kept pace with her, striding along as if they were gunfighters heading into a strange new town, looking for trouble.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ben sat at his desk, watching Severin slee
p. He just couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that the boy he’d whispered to through glass was lying on his bed, head pressed against his pillow, one horn making a deep indentation in it—a pillow Ben had drooled on and cried into and shed skin on, which seemed kind of disgusting the more he thought about it. But that was part of what made Severin’s being there so impossible. His room was such an ordinary place, filled with junk he’d amassed over seventeen years of life, and Severin wasn’t ordinary at all.

  They’d talked for hours in the dark. Severin had wound up on the floor, head tipped back, showing the long column of his throat, eyes drifting closed as it got closer to dawn.

  “You’re welcome to take the bed,” Ben had said, shifting to the edge of it, rumpling the comforter. “I mean, if you want to rest.”

  At that, Severin’s eyes opened. He blinked rapidly, clearly disoriented, as though he’d half-forgotten where he was. “No. I ought not. I fear never waking.”

  Ben considered that. “Have you even slept since the curse was broken? Because that was more than two days ago. Forty-eight hours?”

  Severin nodded vaguely.

  “And you’re not planning to ever sleep again?” Ben asked, raising his eyebrows in a slightly exaggerated manner.

  A corner of Severin’s mouth lifted. “You think I’m too tired to detect sarcasm?”

  “That’s not sarcasm,” Ben said, grinning. “At least not sarcasm exactly.”

  With a groan, Severin levered himself up and spread out on Ben’s vintage Star Trek coverlet, the one he’d told Hazel was ironic but secretly he just really loved. “Haven’t I slept enough?” he asked, but the words became garbled at the end, his body stretching and relaxing into sleep. He looked as beautiful as he’d ever been, messy waves of dark hair curling around his horns, brows curving up, berry-pink mouth slightly parted. Now that he was no longer enchanted, he slept restlessly, his eyes moving beneath lids and his body turning on top of Ben’s bed. Maybe he was dreaming for the first time since he’d been sealed in the coffin.