The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  And so Ben sat like a lone and lonely sentinel until the sky was light outside and he heard a creak on the stair. He went to the door and cracked it open. His sister was in the hallway, Jack behind her. Hazel looked as if she’d come from a party, in a green velvet top she hadn’t been wearing that morning. Her jeans were muddy and her shirt was ripped along one seam. Her hair was tousled and tangled with twigs. Ben watched as they went into Hazel’s room.

  “Are you sure you’re not going to get in trouble, having me here?” Jack whispered. He sat on the edge of her bed.

  Hazel shook her head and went to close the door. “Mom won’t care. She likes you.”

  Where had they been? Ben stared at the closing door, wondering what exactly he was seeing. He’d figured that wherever Hazel had made Jack take her that night had something to do with how she’d been able to free Severin and whatever else she’d been lying about lately. But seeing them together, looking like they were about to sleep in the same bed, worried him for entirely different reasons.

  He loved his sister, but she sure broke a lot of hearts. He’d rather Jack’s not be one of them.

  The hallway went dark again. A few moments later his sister left her room. Ben thought she was going to cross to the bathroom. Maybe he could catch her before she got there and find out what was going on. But she stopped, leaned against the wall, and started to sob.

  Horrible, silent cries that made her bend double, curling around her stomach, as though it hurt to weep like that. Lowering herself to the floor, she crouched down, almost soundless. Tears ran over her cheeks and dripped off her chin as she rocked back and forth.

  Hazel never cried. She was forged from iron; she never broke. No one was tougher than his sister.

  The worst part was how quietly she wept, as if she’d taught herself how, as if she was so used to doing it that it had just become the way she cried. When Ben was little, he remembered how much he’d envied Hazel, free from expectations or obligation. If she wanted to teach herself how to swordfight with YouTube videos and books checked out of the library, their parents didn’t tell her she should practice scales instead. She wasn’t the target of Mom and Dad’s lectures on how talent wasn’t meant to be wasted, how gifts came with obligations, how art was important.

  She’d been so brave and so sure about things. He’d thought the brave and sure were happy, too.

  After a few moments Hazel lifted her shirt to rub the velvet against her eyes. Then she got up with a last, shuddering sigh and went back to her bedroom.

  Ben padded over and turned the knob. Jack was unlacing his boots while Hazel brushed the leaves out of her hair, her eyes red and a little puffy. They both froze.

  “It’s just me,” Ben said.

  “We weren’t—I mean, not really—” Jack started, making gestures toward the bed that Ben thought meant “I am not trying to dishonor your sister, although it is possible that I am hoping to have sex with her,” at the same time Hazel began apologizing for ditching Ben.

  He held up his hand to stop them from talking. “I need one of you—ideally Hazel—to explain what’s actually been going on, and I need that to happen right now, starting with where you were last night.”

  “We went to the faerie revel,” she said, sitting down heavily on her bed. She looked exhausted, the skin under her eyes dark as a bruise. Ben hadn’t expected her to give in so easily after so much evasion. “It didn’t exactly go the way I’d hoped, but I found out some things. The Alderking offered to trade the town’s safety for the capture of his son. There’s only one problem, which is that he’s crazy. Okay, two problems, the second being that his idea of a safe town is bullshit.”

  Ben just stared at her. He’d seen the Folk, but only a few, and those had been scary enough. He couldn’t imagine willingly walking into a gathering of them. Especially if he were Hazel, who’d killed at least three. Her daring always surprised him, but right then he was floored. “The Alderking wants you to bring him Severin?”

  Hazel gave him a sharp look. “How did you know Severin was his son? He didn’t tell us that the other night.”

  Ben shrugged. “I guessed. Well, who else could it be?”

  Hazel shook her head. “You’re a god-awful liar. You’re still in yesterday’s clothes. Obviously, I’m not the only one with secrets. So where were you last night?”

  Ben let out a sigh and walked all the way into the room, closing the door behind him. “Nowhere. Here. Severin came here. He wanted my help.”

  Jack’s eyebrows shot up, and Hazel went completely rigid, as though she thought she ought to do something, but had no idea what. Ben couldn’t help but be a little bit pleased that he could occasionally be shocking, too.

  “Is he—what did the horned boy say?” his sister asked.

  Jack sat down on the chair in front of her vanity, looking deeply uncomfortable, as if he was afraid he was going to be asked to choose sides in an argument that hadn’t happened yet.

  “For one thing, he wants his magical sword back,” said Ben.

  “I hope you didn’t promise it to him,” Hazel said. “I don’t have it. And before you ask, I don’t know who does have it or where it’s being kept—I was looking for clues at the revel.”

  “So what else did you learn?”

  Hazel rubbed her hand over her face and glanced toward Jack. The look he gave her was expressive. “Not much,” she said, finally. “Could you get in touch with Severin again? Could you get him to meet us?”

  “I don’t know. You’re not thinking of actually trying to hunt him down for the Alderking, are you? You’re not going to hurt him.”

  “I’m willing to do whatever I have to,” Hazel said, standing. A muscle in her jaw jumped, as if she’d been clenching her teeth.

  There was a moment when Ben thought about not telling her, when he imagined himself going across the hall and not saying a single thing. But he thought about people being brought out on stretchers from the school and he thought about what Severin had said about his own sister. “Will you tell me everything, all the stuff you’ve been hiding from me?”

  Hazel glanced at Jack and he looked back at her, his eyebrows rising. She must have told him some of it, for them to share a look like that.

  “I will,” Hazel said. “I should have before. Just, do I have to tell you right now? Because I’m dead on my feet and there’s a lot.”

  Although it sounded like another excuse, this time Ben believed her. She looked exhausted and oddly fragile. “Okay. But he’s in my room.”

  “What?” Hazel pushed herself up off the bed and took a step toward the door. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Oh no,” Ben said. “No, you don’t get to be angry, you who’ve been lying to me and hiding things from me. You who brought my best friend with you and made him complicit in the lie. You don’t get to be mad!”

  Hazel’s face went shuttered. “I was trying to protect you.”

  Jack looked as though he wanted to say something. He was clearly tired too, bright-eyed and hollow-cheeked.

  “He’s asleep. I’m not going to wake him up to be interrogated.” Ben’s heart was hammering. Although he’d demanded she tell him the truth, after seeing her reaction, he was starting to suspect that whatever she’d been hiding from him was bigger than he’d previously thought. He was a little scared to hear it.

  “You’ll make sure he stays?” Hazel asked.

  Ben had no idea how he was supposed to do that. “Yeah. When you get up, we’ll figure things out.”

  Jack rose, as if maybe he’d remembered it was ungentlemanly to stay in a girl’s room when he’d slept over in her brother’s a million times.

  “No, stay,” Hazel said softly, catching his fingers.

  Jack looked helpless to refuse her.

  Which made Ben wonder if he’d been wrong about Hazel being fated for Severin. “Sleep tight,” Ben said, backing out before Jack had time to reconsider. He wasn’t ready to share Severin with anyone yet. He was just getti
ng to know him, just getting to think of him as a person it was possible to know.

  As he crossed the hall, Ben felt a flash of fear that when he opened the door and then he saw that Severin was no longer there. It was as though by speaking Severin’s name aloud, by telling his sister about the midnight visit, he’d broken some spell. The window was open, curtain billowing and a few brown leaves resting on the floor where they’d been blown in from the trees outside.

  Panicked, Ben climbed onto the slope of the roof, sending a loose strip of shingle flying to the ground far below. The sky was early-morning pale and bright, the dew still wetting everything.

  Ben sucked in a breath of cool air. For a moment, he saw only trees and road. Then, a moment later, he spotted Severin sitting in a crook of the wide sycamore just past the gutters of the house.

  Letting out a sigh of relief, Ben made his way slowly across the roof, trying not to slip. “Hey, are you—”

  “I am not a thing to be fought over,” the horned boy said. He had stripped out of Ben’s hoodie and was in just the borrowed T-shirt and jeans, bare feet against the bark. But he looked entirely alien, shadowed by branches in the pale morning light.

  “I know,” Ben said, edging closer to the tree. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you heard, but I guess you heard some of it. She wouldn’t hurt you, even if she could.”

  Severin smiled. “I have a sister of my own, you’ll recall. I know what it is to not see our siblings for who they truly are. You’ve done me a good turn that I will not soon forget, Benjamin Evans. You’ve given me succor this night. Nothing more can be asked of you.”

  Ben climbed up into the tree, unsure of where to put his feet. For a moment he thought he was going to slip, but he managed to steady himself. “Hazel went to the revel. She saw your father. He spoke with her. We need to pool information, figure out next moves. Besides, I know you like Hazel, even if you pretend like you don’t.”

  Severin took Ben’s arm and hauled him deeper into the branches, where it was easier to get his balance. “Because I kissed her?”

  “It’s just that Hazel is so—people like Hazel. Boys like Hazel. She goes through this world as if nothing touches her, as if no one can reach her, as though she’s focused on something bigger and better and more important that she’s not going to tell you a single thing about. It drives people crazy. It charms them.”

  “And you’re not charming?” Severin asked him. Ben wasn’t sure if he was being mocked or not.

  “I’m sure that when you kissed her, you noticed she wasn’t some irritable, gawky boy.” Ben felt ridiculous as soon as he said it. Feeling insecure was one thing, showing it was another.

  Severin studied him for a long moment, then leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Ben’s. It was a searching, hungry kiss. His hand wrapped around Ben’s head, holding onto him instead of the tree. Ben’s hand fisted in Severin’s hair, brushed over horn, rough and cold as the back of a seashell. A few moments later, when he pulled away, Ben was trembling with some combination of lust and anger and fear. Because, yes, he’d wanted that. But he hadn’t wanted it thrown in his face.

  “What do you suppose I noticed when I kissed you?” Severin asked.

  Ben sighed, looking down at the patchy lawn below. He wanted Severin to tell him. Wanted to know what he’d thought when his fingers had tightened on the skin above Ben’s hip, wanted to know what he’d felt when he’d gasped into Ben’s mouth. But he was being childish. “I get it, being jealous is ridiculous when you’ve got actual problems like a monster sister and a killer father.”

  Severin shifted, making the trees rustle. His eyes were green as deep groves and forgotten glens, his hair falling around his face. “My problems are yours as well. All of Fairfold is blessed with my problems, and they do not lessen your own. You and your sister are very dear to each other. To show your regard, you give each other lovely bouquets of lies.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “I know you, Benjamin Evans,” Severin said. “Remember?”

  Ben slipped a little, nearly losing his balance. He’d been thinking of Severin as cold, as a story, as a faerie prince—beautiful and distant. He kept forgetting that Severin knew him, knew more about him than any person in the world.

  “You said you loved me so many times,” Severin told him softly, and hearing him say that made Ben flush hotly. “But maybe what you loved best was your own face reflected in the glass.”

  It wasn’t fair he knew Ben like that. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Severin could play on all Ben’s petty insecurities, petty insecurities dating back years to deliver a series of swift surgical cuts so sharp and sure that Ben felt as though he might bleed out before he realized the depth of the wounds.

  “I don’t—it’s not like that,” Ben said. “But, yeah, I wanted to be in love like in the storybooks and songs and ballads. Love that hits you like a lightning bolt. And I’m sorry, because yeah, I get that you think I’m ridiculous. I get that you think I’m hilarious. I know. I get that you’re mocking me. I get how stupid I am, but at least I know.”

  In a fluid motion, Severin stepped off the tree and onto the roof. He held out his hand in a courtly gesture, offering to help Ben out of a tree as you might hand a lady in skirts down from a horse. “I know too, Benjamin Evans. And you’re not nearly as stupid as you think.”

  Ben reached out his hand and let himself be helped onto the roof. They were crossing to the window when a truck pulled into the driveway. It belonged to one of Mom’s artist friends, Suzie, a heavily tattooed sculptor who made little green man faces for over the lintels of houses. She was wearing a skirt, and her hair was pulled up into a ponytail, as if she were going to church or something.

  “That’s weird,” Ben said, waiting until Suzie was in the house before he moved. “I’m going to find what’s going on.”

  “And you wonder if I will remain,” said Severin.

  Ben nodded.

  “I shall be just as you left me,” the faerie prince said, sitting on the wheeled chair in front of Ben’s computer desk and looking up at him with unfathomable moss-green eyes. Ben mentally catalogued all the embarrassing things Severin might see if he looked around and then realized there was nothing half as embarrassing as what Severin already knew.

  Severin grinned up at him, as though reading his thoughts.

  Ben went downstairs.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” Mom said. She was dressed up more than usual—jeans without paint stains, her oversized flower-print top, and three turquoise-and-silver necklaces. Without the streaks of silver in her hair, from a distance, she could have been mistaken for Hazel. “I heard your sister come in this morning. Tell her to start packing. As soon as I get back, we can get on the road.”

  “Where are you going now?”

  “There’s a town meeting over at the Gordons’. About Jack.”

  “Jack?” Ben echoed.

  “You know I like him. But some people are saying that he’s been in league with the Folk. And others are saying that if he just went back to Faerie, then all these bad things that are happening would stop.”

  “But you don’t believe that, right?” Ben thought of Jack, curled up beside Hazel in her bedroom, and felt a flash of pure fury at every single person in Fairfold who’d thought anything like what Mom said.

  She sighed, reaching for a travel coffee mug and her old brown leather purse, the one with birds stitched on it in blue thread. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s in league with anyone, but he was stolen from them. Maybe they do want him back. Maybe they want revenge, too. At least I might, if I were his mother.”

  “What’s happening isn’t Jack’s fault.”

  “Look, nothing’s decided. We’re just sitting down with the Gordons to talk things over. And by the time I get back, hopefully your sister will be home and we can all leave town for a while.”

  “Mom,” Ben said. “If you let them do something to Jack, I will never forgive you. He�
��s just like us. He’s as human as any human.”

  “I just want you and Hazel to be safe,” Mom said. “That’s all any of us ever want for our children.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have raised us here in Fairfold,” Ben told her.

  Mom gave him a dark look. “We came back here for you, Benjamin. We could have stayed in Philadelphia, and you’d be well on your way to doing something most people can only dream of. You’re the one who couldn’t stand leaving Fairfold. You’re the one who gave the chance at a different life up, who couldn’t be bothered to practice after your injury.”

  Ben was too stunned to say anything in return. They never talked about Philadelphia, at least not that way—not in a way that acknowledged bad things had happened. They never talked about any of the big, looming, awful stuff from Ben’s childhood. They never talked about the dead body Hazel found in the woods or the way Mom and Dad had let them roam around alone out there in the first place. He had always assumed that was the family compact, that they each got their own well of bitterness and they were supposed to tend to it without bothering anyone else.

  Apparently, not anymore.

  Walking to the door, Mom looked back at him, as if she was taking his measure. “And tell your sister to pack, okay?”

  The screen slammed closed, but instead of immediately following her out, Suzie crossed the foyer to put her hand on Ben’s arm. “You say he’s as human as the rest of us. How can you be so sure? How can anyone really know what’s in their hearts?” Before he could answer, she headed off after his mother. A few moments later he heard the truck tires roll over the driveway gravel.

  Ben put his head down on the counter, his thoughts a tangled mess. Then, not knowing what else to do, he got down four mugs and started pouring coffee into them.