The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  “But what does that mean?” Jack asked.

  Myself. My own self.

  “Give me a pen,” Hazel said, in a voice that trembled only slightly. She opened the book to a blank page in the back.

  Ben got a Sharpie out of the kitchen junk drawer and handed it over. “What’s wrong?”

  Taking the marker in her right hand, she wrote “seven years to pay your debts,” then switching hands, she wrote the words with her left.

  It was the same handwriting she’d seen on the walnut messages, the same handwriting that had marked AINSEL on her wall. For a long moment, Hazel just stared at the page in front of her. The word scratched in mud on her wall wasn’t the name of a conspirator or enemy. It was a signature. Her own.

  There was no one else. No shadowy figure pulling the strings, leaving clues, guiding her hand. Just herself, discovering the way to open the casket, figuring out the value of the sword she had. Just herself, realizing what the Alderking intended to do to Fairfold and trying to stop it.

  My Ainsel. My own self.

  A coded message, because the Alderking had forbidden her from revealing the nature of their bargain to her daylight self, so all she’d been able to do was leave a few desperate riddles and hints.

  She recalled what Severin had said about being woken. He’d heard her voice, but by the time I came awake—truly awake—the sky was bright and you were gone. Of course she’d been gone, she’d had to rush to her bed and become day Hazel. She must have barely made it there—not with enough time to even clean the mud off her feet. Panicking, writing on the wall, dumping a book into the newly-empty trunk. She’d smashed the case with some plan in mind, some idea of bargaining with Severin or returning his sword to him. Whatever she’d intended, when he hadn’t woken, she must have realized that her ownership of Heartsworn would be discovered.

  So she’d hidden it somewhere no one would think to look, somewhere the Alderking couldn’t find it, even if he found her.

  And then—well, Hazel had stayed up through the whole next night, following Ben into the woods and being menaced by Severin. She’d only slept for a few moments, near dawn. Only long enough for her night self to write the note that Hazel had found in her book bag: FULL MOON OVERHEAD. BETTER GO STRAIGHT TO BED.

  But Hazel hadn’t obeyed. She’d stayed awake throughout a whole other evening, giving night Hazel no time to retrieve the sword, no time for an alternate plan, no time for anything.

  The first note—the one in the walnut, the one she found at Lucky’s—might have been her night self’s test, to see if she could send a message to her day self without being caught by the Alderking. And the next one would have been at the height of her panic, when she wasn’t sure whether she was about to be discovered and wouldn’t want to leave anything incriminating in case one of the Folk saw it. She wouldn’t want to give her day self so many clues that she’d put herself in danger without knowing all of the story either.

  What a mess she’d made of things.

  Severin came down the stairs, holding a spear-like thing he’d made from saw blades and a wooden shaft of a rake. “Someone’s outside,” he said.

  Hazel went to the window and saw them circling the house. Knights on faerie steeds, Jack’s mother behind one of them in a green-and-gold gown that swirled through the air. Eolanthe swung down from the horse, striding toward the house.

  “Mom,” Jack said and went to the door, throwing it open.

  “Wait,” called Hazel. “She doesn’t have it.”

  But Ben had already scattered the salt and berries with his foot so that the faerie woman could step inside. Her eyes were silver and her hair was the green of new grass. She looked toward Severin and her smile turned frosty.

  “I thought I might find you here,” she said.

  He made a small, courtly bow. “My lady Eolanthe. To what do we owe this pleasure? Those are the king’s guards with you and I do not hold favor with the king.”

  “You must understand,” she said, turning toward Jack, who was standing, frozen, his hand still on the doorknob. “When I told him where his son was, he promised to spare mine. He has guaranteed your safety. Jack, you don’t know what this means.”

  Hazel already suspected they’d been wrong, grievously wrong, about Eolanthe having Heartsworn. Now she realized they’d also been wrong about her loyalties. They’d been wrong about everything.

  “How could you do this?” Jack spat out the words. He was shaking all over, as though he was going to shake apart. “How could you call yourself my mother and bargain away my friend’s lives?”

  She took a step back, unnerved by the force of his anger. “For your safety! I have but a few moments to bring you from this place. Come. Whatever you think of me, you will be able to do more for your friends if you’re not clapped in chains with them.”

  “No,” Jack said. “I’m not going with you. No.”

  “Heed her,” said Severin. “There is no shame in living. Without Heartsworn, we cannot win.”

  But Jack only shook his head.

  Hazel had to do something, but she could think of only one possible move. She remembered the story Leonie had told her, the one where Jack commanded Matt to punch himself in the face and Matt had done it. She remembered the way Jack had knotted her hair and commanded her not to cry.

  “Jack,” Hazel said, grabbing hold of his arm so he had to look at her. “Can you make me sleep?”

  His eyes were full of anguish. He didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.

  His mother frowned. “Jack, you must come away with me.”

  “Can you make me sleep?” she asked again, raising her voice to a near shout. “Like a spell—like the way you made it so I couldn’t cry. It’s still night, so if I sleep and then wake up again, I won’t be myself. I’ll be her. The other Hazel. She’ll tell you everything.”

  They all stared at her with blank incomprehension, but she couldn’t say more with Eolanthe standing right in front of her, ready to tattle to the Alderking.

  “What if Night Hazel isn’t entirely on our side?” Severin asked, raising a single arched brow. “At least our Hazel will fight for us.”

  She smiled at that—their prince calling her our Hazel. Just as in one of their stories.

  “Hazel’s always on our side,” said Jack. He touched her brow gently. She thought he would give her the command then, but instead he leaned in and kissed her. She felt the soft pressure of his mouth against hers, felt the smile stretching his lips. Then he pulled back a little ways and spoke. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep.”

  She felt the magic rolling over her, a vast wave, and at the last second, even though she’d asked him to do it, she fought the enchantment. Trying to keep her eyes open, she surged up off the cushion. Then she staggered forward and fell. The last thing she remembered was Ben’s shout and Jack’s hand catching her moments before she slammed her head against the floor.

  CHAPTER 20

  Between one blink and the next, Hazel woke.

  She was marching, along with several of the Alderking’s knights, through a cave-like opening. Overhead, milky light filtered through the leaves and the wind made the branches dance. Day had come. Then they moved through into the darkness of the hollow hill, full of worming roots above them, like pale waving arms, and thorned vines blooming with strange white flowers crawling up the walls. Blue-footed mushrooms lined their path.

  And creaking along behind her, guarded by ten knights on each side, was a cage—black metal twisted in the form of bent branches set on large, ornate wheels. It held Severin and her brother. Ben sat on the floor of the cage, looking terrified but unhurt. Severin paced it like a beast in a zoo, his rage seeming to radiate out. His cheek was slashed, and there was a dark stain in his midsection that even at this distance she knew was probably blood.

  Her step faltered. How was she free when they’d been captured, when they’d fought. What had she done?

  Why hadn’t she fought with them? Why wasn’
t she in that cage?

  “Sir Hazel?” an unfamiliar voice asked. She realized she was standing among the Alderking’s knights, dressed like one of them—dressed in the stiff doublet she’d found where her sword used to be, the one that had been beside the book. Looking at the knight who had spoken, she realized she wore the mirror of his garb, although he had plates of shining golden armor down one of his arms, an exaggeratedly large piece at his elbow, and a golden plate along his lower jaw. It was strange, menacing, and beautiful.

  Marcan, Jack had called him. He’d been at the full-moon revel.

  No, she wasn’t just standing near the Alderking’s knights, wasn’t just dressed like them. She was one of them. That was why Marcan was saying her name in concerned tones. He knew her—knew nighttime Hazel, Knight Hazel, the Hazel who had served the Alderking and served him still, the one who must have been standing in her place just moments before. She remembered Marcan’s words from the revel: Hazel doesn’t mind coming with me. We’ve crossed swords before.

  “I’m fine,” she said. She reached for her belt automatically, but there was no sword at her hip. Of course not; her blade was gone. She’d hidden it.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble,” Marcan said under his breath. “Be careful.”

  The procession halted in front of the throne of the Alderking, where he waited with his courtiers. Beside him was a casket of black metal and crystal, this one even more intricately wrought than the one that had rested in the woods. Beside it, standing with a proprietary hand on one glassy pane, stood a small wizened creature with a cloud of silver hair and a scarlet doublet. He wore intricate jeweled bracers at his wrists and a pin attached to the cloth of his shirt with wings that moved in the wind, as though a gold-and-pearl moth with gemstone eyes could be alive. Grimsen, she recalled, from Severin’s story. The blacksmith whose powers were so great that the Alderking stole him away from the old court.

  Grimsen, who, with his brothers, made Heartseeker and Heartsworn. Who could coax metals into any shape. She must have stared at him too fixedly, because he turned toward her and gave her a mendacious smile. His black eyes gleamed.

  Frantically, she searched the crowd of grim courtiers for Jack—and spotted him, riding before his elf mother on a dappled faerie steed. He wore an expression that was no expression at all, a curious unreadable blankness. Her gaze rested on him, until he finally noticed. His eyes widened and he opened his palms and mimed looking down at them.

  Confused, she did the same.

  Her heart sped all over again. On her right, in black ink, like that of a Sharpie, were the words CARROTS and IRON RODS in the same scratchy handwriting of all the other messages. And on her left were the words REMEMBER TO KNEEL in a familiar hand—her own.

  The first two clues were a reference to that story about the farmer and the boggart, the one she thought hadn’t made any sense. Those were the same words that had been circled in mud, but she no more understood the clue now than she had then.

  And the third clue—a reminder about etiquette?

  Scanning the crowd, she looked for Jack again, her eyes sweeping over a bent-backed woman holding a gnarled cane, a long-nosed green man with a shock of black hair, a golden creature with long grasshopper-like legs.

  No one met her eyes. Jack wasn’t there.

  “Sir Hazel,” the Alderking said. “The sun is risen and so you are no longer my little marionette.”

  Several of the courtiers, some in tattered lace finery, some in nothing at all, began tittering behind hands and fans. One phooka laughed so hard that he brayed like a pony.

  She closed her hands into fists, trying to fight down panic.

  “Your face!” the phooka shouted, strange golden goat eyes rolling up in his head with mirth. “You should see your face!”

  Hazel glanced back at Ben, in the cage. He was standing, hands curled around the bars. When he saw her turn his way, he gave her a somewhat unsteady smile, like he was trying to put on a brave face—a smile that she couldn’t possibly deserve.

  “But you are still mine,” the Alderking continued. “You would do well not to forget it, Hazel. Come forward and kneel before me.”

  She knelt, feeling the cold of the stone seep up into the strange, almost metallic cloth of the pants she wore.

  REMEMBER TO KNEEL.

  “Look at me,” the Alderking said.

  She did, seeing the poison green of his eyes and the long raven-feather cape draped over his shoulders, each feather the glimmering blue-black of an oil slick. He was ruinously beautiful in the way that knives and scalpels can be beautiful. She’d tried to avoid thinking about that, since he was Severin’s father and it wasn’t right that he should be equal in beauty to his son, but staring at him made it impossible to ignore. He was a fairy-tale king, radiant and terrible. Part of her wanted to serve him, and the more he gazed down at her, the stronger that feeling became.

  She forced herself to look away from his eyes, forced herself to study his lips instead.

  “Imagine my surprise to find Severin hiding in your house. Not only have you failed at your task, but you have squandered my goodwill.”

  She stayed silent, biting the inside of her cheek, and bowed her head.

  The Alderking had clearly expected nothing less. “Will you deny it, little sneak? Will you pretend that you intended to betray him? Will you claim that you’re still my loyal servant?”

  “No,” she said, trying not to show panic on her face. “I will not.”

  For the first time since she’d been brought before him, he looked wary. “Come here, Eolanthe. Tell the court what you know.”

  Jack’s elf mother stepped forward, a leaf in one of her hands. Hazel knew what it was immediately. She read out the words written in her son’s blood, and when she named Heartsworn, the buzz of conversation among the courtiers was silenced, as though the name of the blade itself was a spell.

  Eolanthe was shaking a little. The Alderking watched her with blazing, possessive eyes. He looked at her as though he’d remembered that he was angry with her and that the memory of his own anger excited him. Hazel could see why Eolanthe hadn’t wanted Jack to draw the Alderking’s attention.

  A moment later, the full force of that stare was turned back on Hazel. “Tell me, why would you believe one of my courtiers had Heartsworn?”

  Hazel swallowed. “Someone has to have it. That’s the only way that the casket could have been broken, the only way that Severin could have been freed.”

  He leaned forward eagerly. “And who shared that bit of the curse with you?”

  Hazel shook her head. This part was easy. “Severin told me.”

  The Alderking signaled and the cage was wheeled closer to him. He studied his son with an odd possessiveness, gazing at him the way one might look at a particularly valuable painting put away in storage because it had acquired a scratch. A painting you no longer wished to hang where others could see, but neither were you willing to part with.

  Severin stared back, eyes hungry. Ben had stepped into shadow, so that it was hard to see his face. Hazel wondered what he was thinking.

  “Who freed you?” the Alderking asked his son. “Tell me where the sword is and I will forgive you. You may sit at my side, my own heir restored. What do you think of that? I have the means to take my revenge on the Court in the East. With your sister under my control and the twin swords back in my possession, nothing stands in my way.

  “Let us destroy Fairfold, destroy all those who gawked at you these long years as you slept. I will show you the might of your sister brought to harness. You will see how easily we will take back the Eastern Court, wrest the throne from the upstart knight who rules it.”

  Hazel sucked in her breath. He spoke about destroying Fairfold as though it were nothing, a smudge to polish away.

  In the cage, Ben whispered something to Severin, but the horned boy shook his head. When he turned back to his father, his eyes were hot and bright. “Let the mortals go and I will sit bes
ide you, Father. Let me out of the cage and I will take my place by your side.”

  A thin smile appeared on the Alderking’s mouth. “Where is Heartsworn?”

  Severin shook his head. “You first. I’m the one in the cage.”

  For a frozen moment Hazel wondered if the Alderking would let Severin out, if Severin would betray them. But then the Alderking laughed and called over a creature in red armor, with a tail that whipped around behind him and ears like that of a fox. “Take the mortal out instead and bring me the Bone Maiden and all her knives.”

  Ben shouted as a dozen knights gathered around the cage, shoving their swords between the metal branches to keep Severin back as they unlocked the door and dragged Hazel’s brother through it. Severin grabbed one of the knights, twisting his arm hard, nearly pulling between the bars. The faerie screamed and she heard a sharp sound, like bone cracking.

  Hazel started toward them.

  “Halt, Sir Hazel,” said the Alderking. “You will stay just as you are or I will cut young Benjamin’s throat.”

  Hazel stopped moving. Three knights pressed their blades to Severin’s skin. He was breathing hard, but no longer struggled. Two knights seized Ben and dragged him across the stone floor to thrust him in front of a blue-faced hag in a tattered black gown who had appeared at the Alderking’s summons. She pressed long fingers to Ben’s forehead, inspecting his birthmark.

  “Now, you or my son will tell me what has happened to Heartsworn. If you don’t, the boy will suffer.” The Alderking’s smile was horrible.

  “Blessed and cursed, cursed and blessed,” the blue woman said, then took one of his fingers and twisted it hard.

  He screamed, artlessly and uncontrollably.

  “Stop,” Hazel shouted. If she’d known where the sword was, she might have told him, but it was impossible to think, impossible to puzzle anything through with Ben screaming. She was glad for the knot Jack put in her hair. Without it, she would have wept. “Stop. Stop or I will stop you.”