“Turn around,” Rook said aloofly, watching me sidelong. For a moment he’d adopted his old tone, as though we were friends in my parlor again, and it seemed a correction was in order.
But turn I did, unable to help myself. The glade’s trees were growing, stretching higher and higher, their branches spreading toward one another overhead. Where they met in the center, they laced together under the glittering night sky. Smaller saplings struggled up from the moss between the larger trees to seal the gaps, putting forth trembling new leaves already resplendent in autumn colors. All of this happened nearly noiselessly, with only a quiet creaking, groaning, and snapping of expanding wood to mark the change.
It was as though I had watched the glade age a century in a matter of seconds. But no glade would age like this naturally: I stood in an open space in which the trees spread around and above me like a cathedral. Their branches were so tightly interwoven they resembled flying buttresses; no amount of craftsmanship could capture the majesty or wonder of this living antechamber. Looking straight up left me dizzy. Scarlet leaves drifted from the silent heights, passing through shafts of moonlight on their way down.
I whirled around. “Your blood did this.”
Rook stood watching me, a conflicting clamor of emotions in his eyes: fascination observing my human response. Hope that I would find what he had created beautiful. And beneath that, sorrow, as raw as an open wound.
Desperation flashed across his features. He struggled to compose himself, but couldn’t. Finally he turned on his heel and put his back to me with a dramatic billow of his coattails, drew his sword a few inches, and pretended to inspect the blade.
“You’ll be safe here tonight,” he said imperiously. “The Hunt won’t be able to sniff us out in a rowan glade, and even if Hemlock did chance upon this place by accident, no fairy beast, no fair one alive could breach the magic I have just wrought.”
The knowledge that he was only telling the bare, unembellished truth made the breath catch in my throat. He was arrogant verging on insufferable, but god—the power he possessed. And here he was, as confused as a child by his own emotions, dragging me to trial over a painting. I couldn’t believe that just that morning I thought I’d been in love with him. I shook my head. Incredible.
“Ten thousand verging on five years old,” I muttered to myself, testing the ground with my shoe.
“What did you say?” Rook inquired frostily.
Of course fair folk had impeccable hearing. “Nothing.”
“You did say something, but whatever it was, I’m certain it’s beneath me.” He slid his sword back in with a snap. “Now lie down and get some rest. We begin again at sunrise.”
Loath as I was to follow orders, I wouldn’t do myself any good staying awake out of sheer stubbornness. I wandered around the glade until I found a lump in the moss I could put my back against—an engulfed tree stump, I thought—and curled up on my side facing Rook, who remained standing, facing away. I worked my ring back onto my finger, grateful to have at least some measure of protection, however small. But now I faced a different problem. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to sleep.
Emma and the twins probably hadn’t noticed I was gone. They would in the morning, when they found my bed empty. What would Emma do? She’d given everything up to raise me. She’d promised on my father’s deathbed to take care of me. And now I’d vanished in the night without a word. Unless I was very lucky, and very clever (I had to remain honest about my odds), she’d never know what had happened to me. She’d wait for me forever. It seemed too cruel to bear.
She had enchanted chickens guaranteed to each lay six eggs a week, I reminded myself. A cord of firewood magically appeared outside the house every other month. Another fair one delivered a fat goose once per fortnight; and oddly, due to an awkwardly worded agreement, a pile of exactly fifty-seven walnuts materialized on the doorstep whenever a thrush sang in our oak tree. The twins would give her trouble, but she’d be all right. Wouldn’t she?
Several paces away, Rook had finally sat down. He sat elegantly with one arm propped up on his knee. Perhaps he knew I was watching and arranged himself in his handsomest pose accordingly. No—he thought I was asleep. Somehow I knew this to be the case, because he’d taken off his raven pin and was turning it over in his hands. Beyond him the scarlet leaves continued sifting down through the moonlight, like rose petals illuminated by silvered stained glass.
Heartsick, I wondered if Emma would think I’d run off with him on purpose. Just hours ago she had proven how well she knew me. If that was the case, she had to realize that no matter how wary I was of fair folk, I’d wanted to see Rook again more than anything else in the world. Maybe she’d be tortured forever by the possibility that her regretful words had encouraged me to run away. That I’d decided taking care of my family was a burden after all, and I’d abandoned her and the twins without bothering to say good-bye.
It occurred to me then that my imagination was conjuring up increasingly unrealistic, maudlin scenarios, but wallowing neck-deep in misery, I was powerless to stop it from happening. I thought of Emma taking too much of her tincture and collapsing. I thought of the twins going through my room, searching for any sign of where I’d gone, and finding Rook’s drawings in my closet. A hot tear spilled over. I breathed through my mouth so Rook wouldn’t hear me snuffling through my clogged nose. Eventually, I cried myself to exhaustion. My eyelashes drooped and my vision blurred. I didn’t remember falling asleep.
When I woke up, everything was golden. The light caressing my face was golden, and the warmth was golden too. I felt like I was suspended in honey or amber. An autumn fragrance surrounded me, engulfed me, underlain with a wild, masculine but not-quite-human smell that at once comforted me and settled like molten gold deep in my body, melted and poured into a crucible.
Also, someone was combing my hair with his fingers.
“Stop that!” I cried, bolting upright in alarm. Rook’s coat fell from my shoulders and I cast around until I found him behind me, wearing a self-satisfied smile. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You have a few twigs left in your hair,” he said, and reached toward me again.
I intercepted his hand with my own ring-wearing one, or at least tried to, because he was up like a shot before I managed it, glaring down at me.
“Rook,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “before I get up, you have to promise to never touch me again without my permission.”
“I can touch whomever I please.”
“Have you ever stopped to think that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should?”
His eyes narrowed. “No,” he said.
“Well, this is one of those things.” I saw he didn’t understand. “Among humans it’s considered polite,” I added firmly.
A muscle jumped in his cheek, and his smile had faded. “Well, that doesn’t sound in the least reasonable. What if you were being attacked, and I had to touch you to save your life, but I couldn’t because I needed to request your permission first? Letting you die wouldn’t be polite.”
“Fine. You can touch me in that case, but every other time you need to ask.”
“And why do you suppose I shall agree to your absurd mortal demands?” Peevishly, he snatched his coat from me and flung it back on himself without bothering to put his arms through the sleeves.
“Because I can make your life miserable all the way to the autumn court, and you know it,” I replied.
He stalked off across the glade. I got the feeling he needed to throw a tantrum before giving in. Sure enough, he soon returned with a stormy expression as the land changed all around him. The moss wilted brown while thorny brambles erupted forth at his heels, grasping like fingers until they grew into an eldritch-looking tangle as high as my waist. I hadn’t expected something quite so dramatic: each thorn was as long as my finger, so sharp it glistened in the morning light. All my instincts shrieked at me to get up and run before they reached me. But that was the reaction Rook wanted, so I remained where I sat.
The brambles writhed up all around my body, stretching crooked, twitching tendrils toward my clothes. Their thorns rattled together threateningly. I gave them a stern look. I knew a bluff when I saw one. Eventually the brambles subsided, rather sulkily, and froze in place. Rook stood over me encased within his bramble sea in a white-lipped state of high dudgeon, the final proof that I had won.