“Your faerie godfather,” my father says, as if this makes total sense. “I’ll be back later.”
“My…what?” But my father winks at me and, whistling, steps out onto the doorstep and then down the street.
“Aunt True?” I call. “Aunt Virtue?”
“Yes, dear?” Aunt Virtue calls back.
“I’m going to the Common,” I tell them and step out and close the door behind me.
Ben is not on the Common. I stand in the middle of the swirling crowds in and around Park Street and feel lost and bereft. We won, I think. I got my father back, and the Otherworld is presumably much better off. I wrote the story I wanted. But my story had Ben. And I can’t find Ben.
I turn away from Park Street, walking up and over to a patch of sunny grass, where I sit.
And as if on cue, Kelsey and Merrow and Trow are there. I’m not sure where they came from.
They don’t seem to know where they came from either.
Kelsey says dazedly, “What happened?”
“I have no idea,” I answer.
“But you were the one who told us to do this!” she points out.
“But I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was just making things up as I went along.”
“We rewrote the story,” Merrow says. “I’ve been reading prophecy after prophecy and…we won. We made the world we wanted. Everything is the way it always was. Only everything is better. We saved everyone.”
“We won,” I say and look out over Boston Common. I want to know how to find the rest of the Otherworld creatures. Where are the Erlking and his goblin army? If I snuck my way into a subway tunnel, would I be able to find him? Or are we cut off now? Is that part of my life over? Is the rest of my life just going to be…normal? Was that the story I wrote for myself? I feel like I didn’t get that far.
And where is Ben? When I saved the world, did I send him back into the Otherworld? Will he just stay there now that his job is over, now that he doesn’t need to protect me anymore?
“So the Seelies are gone?” I say.
“Seems so. I don’t know. You were the only one of us who ever actually got to go over to the Otherworld.”
“Kelsey did too,” I tell her. “And it’s not really something to be jealous of. Trust me.”
“Agreed,” says Kelsey, nodding emphatically.
“I don’t know.” Merrow shrugs. “Maybe now it will be. Now that we’ve fixed everything. Maybe we can ask your traveler boyfriend if he’ll take us.”
“I’m not going to run tours,” says Ben good-naturedly from behind us, and I whirl around.
He smiles at me. His eyes are green like the new grass all around us and blue like the bright sky above us. I want to fling myself into his arms, but I am aware of the audience and I am also aware that I don’t know where we stand. Not quite.
“We are third, fourth, and fifth wheels,” Merrow remarks.
“I’m always the third wheel when it comes to all of you,” says Kelsey.
“I’m sure you won’t be single long,” Merrow tells her. “I mean, us faeries are pretty irresistible. Right, Trow?”
“Being a faerie myself, I wholeheartedly endorse that,” replies Trow.
“Know a good ice cream place?” Merrow asks.
“Do I ever,” says Kelsey, and they all pick themselves up from the grass.
I sit, awkward, trying to decide if I’m supposed to go with them.
“You’re supposed to stay here,” Kelsey says. “But later, you and I are going to have a long discussion about my being supernatural.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I say. “I don’t know anything about being supernatural.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job with it,” Kelsey replies.
“I’m not.” And then I say honestly, “I’m just trying to be me.”
Kelsey smiles at me, and then she moves off with Merrow and Trow, and they are laughing about something. I think how maybe saving the world together is kind of a huge bonding experience.
I watch them go, and then I look at Ben. Ben walks over to me and stands with his hands in his pockets, looking down at me.
He is so dazzlingly beautiful, I think. It’s been a while since I thought that, in the middle of all the running for our lives we’ve been doing. In the middle of how angry I’ve been with him, how betrayed I’ve felt by him. It almost hurts to look at him, he’s so gorgeous. I squint up at the cloudless sky then look back at him. “You’re the only person on Boston Common wearing a raincoat today.”
He doesn’t smile. “Glockenspiel,” he says.
“What?” I ask, wondering if he’s started speaking another language.
“It’s Glockenspiel,” he repeats.
He’s not making any sense. “What is?”
He sighs and sits beside me on the grass. Next to me, closer to me, I can see he looks tired, smudges of exhaustion under his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask in concern.
“In my time, everything happened two minutes ago.”
“In my time too.”
“Not really. It just seems that way to you.” He lies down on his back on the grass and looks up at the sky. “It’s been a very long day, Selkie.”
I think of his mother, and I say again, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Just tired.”
“So we won?”
“We won,” he confirms.
“And what happened? How are things in the Otherworld?”
“Wonderful, actually. Safford sends his gratitude.”
“So that worked,” I realize. “Writing him back in. What about Will?”
“Ah,” says Ben and almost smirks. “You should ask your Aunt True about that one.”
I wince. “Stop it,” I tell him.
He looks at me, abruptly serious. “Speaking of the Otherworld. I could, if you wanted, spend, you know, a lot more time here.”
I swallow thickly, my pulse racing wildly. “More time than you spend now?”
“I could spend forever here.”
My heart feels too full for me to talk. “Forever’s a long time,” I tell him.
“It’s the blink of an eye,” he counters.
“I don’t want to just stay in Boston. I want to see everything. I want to see it all without being afraid for our lives the whole time.”
“I will take you anywhere you would like to go. Say the word.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. I take a deep breath. It’s exactly what I wanted Ben to say, and yet at the same time, it’s all too much.
“So she loved you,” I say abruptly. “Your mother. She was protecting you all along, helping you, in a convoluted, faerie way. Right?”
“She was protecting all of us. By making it look as if she wasn’t. But she found the way to get the prophecy to be fulfilled in exactly the way she wanted it to be fulfilled, and she saved all of us in the end.”
“She also caused a lot of problems,” I say, thinking of the cursed coat.
“She was a faerie,” Ben says and looks at me. “We always cause more problems than we intend to.”
“Why didn’t she just help us at the Unseelie Court? It would have saved us so much trouble.”
Ben says after a moment, “I wasn’t…I wasn’t trying to manipulate you.”
“When?” I ask, confused. I have no idea how that answers my question.
“When I asked you to kiss me to escape from Avalon. It’s what my mother was talking about. Giving enchantment the ultimate strength: love. It has never been the weakness the Seelies have always presumed it to be. It has always been the source of the Le Fay strength. That’s why she didn’t help us at the Unseelie Court. Because you still could have been manipulated away to Avalon through love of your father. Everything stil
l could have fallen apart. But if she sealed the whole thing with love, if she took the power of that love and turned it against the Seelies, against their prophecy and toward ours, then she would seal the prophecy forever. That was why I had you kiss me. I could get us out of there, but I needed you to love me to do it.”
I look down at him on the grass and I say it out loud. “I always love you.”
“I know you do.” He sits up. “And you trust me. You said you did.”
And I shouldn’t. And yet. “I do. I trust you.”
“And I trust you. That’s why I’m telling you. Glockenspiel.”
“I don’t know what you mean when you say that, Ben,” I tell him. “Is it some kind of faerie vow?”
“No. It’s my hidden name.”
My breath stalls in my chest. He says it so simply, as if it’s nothing at all. “It’s your what?” I whisper when I can form words again.
“My hidden name.” He smiles at me, looking delighted with himself.
“Why would you tell me that?” I ask, astonished.
“Because I trust you.” He leans forward and brushes a kiss over my lips. “Also because someday you might need to know my whole name to save me. I do foolish things sometimes, you know.”
I feel like this is the equivalent of a marriage proposal, this knowledge he has given me. I tremble with the power of it, with how matter-of-factly he is placing himself in my hands. I clench my hands into the front of his raincoat. “Ben…” I say shakily.
“Shh. I gave you my whole name. You should say it. Say it the way you love me.”
“Benedict,” I whisper and brush a kiss over his left eyelid as it flutters beneath my touch. “Will o’ the Wisp.” I brush a kiss over his right eyelid. “Celador.” I kiss the bridge of his nose. “Glockenspiel.” I kiss the tip of his nose. “Le Fay,” I finish. I linger close to him, our noses brushing together. “It’s a beautiful name.”
“Only when you say it. I give you the power of my hidden name, Selkie Stewart. And I seal it with love.”
Benedict Will o’ the Wisp Celador Glockenspiel Le Fay kisses me into oblivion. Metaphorically speaking, this time. Because he’s the best kisser in the Otherworld.
Faerie tales end with happily ever after. But that’s just where our tale of faeries is beginning.
Thank you for reading!
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The book you’ve just finished is Book 2 in the Otherworld series. Other books in the series are The Girl Who Never Was, The Girl Who Kissed a Lie: An Otherworld Novella, and The Girl Who Read the Stars: An Otherworld Novella. If you loved The Boy with the Hidden Name, check out our mailing list for updates on new releases and access to exclusive content.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As usual, many thanks to the small army of people that make a book possible:
My agent, Andrea Somberg, whose cheerleading has been invaluable and who also understands that breakfast is the best meal of the day.
My editor, Aubrey Poole, who made this book so much better and did it with aplomb and flair and infinite patience, and made this all so much incredible fun.
The rest of the team at Sourcebooks, including Katy Lynch and Derry Wilkens, who perform publicist wizardry on a regular basis, Jillian Bergsma, Cat Clyne, Kay Mitchell, Valerie Pierce, Katherine Prosswimmer, Becca Sage, Jennifer Sterkowitz, Brittany Vibbert, and Christina Wilson.
My friends, for continued wisdom, talking-off-ledge-ness, and hilarity, including Sonja L. Cohen, who stayed up late helping with copyediting and provided design services; Claudia Gray, who basically knows everything in the world in the best way possible; and Larry Stritof, for ongoing tech support.
Tumblr and Twitter and all who reside there, for saving my sanity and being madly inspirational.
And as always, my family: Mom, Dad, Meg, Cait, Ma, Bobby, Jeff, Jordan, and baby Isabella, for being people I love to come home for.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Skylar Dorset grew up in Rhode Island, graduated from Boston College and Harvard Law School, and has lived in New Orleans, Mississippi, and Washington, DC. But she actually spends most of her time living with the characters in her head. She hopes that doesn’t make her sound too crazy. Visit www.skylardorset.com.
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