“Not for us,” he said. “Never for us.”

There was nothing I could say to that. My words of comfort were in vain. I could say nothing to reassure him, not truly. Because here, in the forest, his humanity would be the death of him. Perhaps not now—perhaps not for hundreds of years—but in the end, no matter what, he faced murder at the hands of his kind. I steeled myself against the tears stinging my eyes and the hard, painful knot swelling in my throat. It seemed terribly, unimaginably unfair that I was going to leave him here to die alone. The unfairness of it howled within me like a storm, tearing everything apart.

He pulled away. I must have lost track of time, because I felt cold without his touch.

“It was arrogant of me to assume that I could protect you from every ill at the hands of my kind.” His voice sounded empty. “I barely arrived in time to save you.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

He shook his head. “If something like this happens again tomorrow, whose fault it is won’t matter. You might be killed.”

And here I was, deciding to stay an extra night despite the danger. An extra twenty-four hours was nothing. Yet, it was everything. I might live more tomorrow than I did all the years of the rest of my life combined. How much was I willing to risk for it? The old me, the one who’d hidden Rook’s sketches in the back of her closet, would never have asked that question. But that was the problem with the old me, I was coming to realize. She’d accepted that behaving correctly meant not being happy, because that was the way the world worked. She hadn’t asked enough—of life, or of herself.

“Is there a protective charm you can cast on me?” I asked. “Just until we part.”

His expression shuttered. He spoke carefully. “There is only one way to safeguard a mortal from fairy magic. No other fair one would be able to enchant you or influence you while it lasted, but it’s more than a mere charm. For it to work, you would have to tell me your true name.”

Rasp, rasp, rasp, went the squirrel, a harsh and grating sound. “You speak of ensorcellment.”

“Yes. I understand if you won’t allow it. But if you asked it of me, I would use it only to keep you safe. I would never manipulate your thoughts.”

“If you did, I’d have no way of knowing.”

He dipped his head in assent. “You would have to trust me. I give my word.”

If he had been any other fair one, I’d have been combing through his words in search of a trick—the lie of how he planned to hurt me twisted into truth. But god help me, I wasn’t. I believed him. I closed my eyes and breathed in and out in the darkness, turning my judgment inward. Keeping my true name a secret was among my most deeply held principles. Trusting a fair one was madness.

I was tired of it all. Perhaps it was time to stop keeping secrets and become a little mad.

This time, both my heart and my mind screamed the same truth.

I opened my eyes to find Rook studying me, gaze shadowed by the hair falling to frame his face. His lips thinned. Reading my expression, he gave the slightest nod. “We’ll think of another way—”

“Yes,” I said.

He inhaled sharply. “What?”

“I trust you.” Fierce conviction flooded me like morning light, searing away every doubt. “I know you. I’ll take you at your word. But,” I added, “if I begin paying you too many compliments while you have me ensorcelled, I will become suspicious.”

He didn’t seem to have quite grasped my answer. I don’t think my weak joke even registered with him. He bent a knee, bringing our faces to the same level. “Isobel, before you decide for certain, you have to know this would unbind me—I would be able to touch you again when you aren’t in danger.”

“Good. I don’t want you dropping me again.”

He gave a startled laugh, dangerously close to a sob. He looked at me as though I were life’s greatest mystery. “You mortals are terribly strange,” he said, in a tight voice.

“Coming from you, I’m beginning to suspect that’s a compliment. Is there anyone else around?” He shook his head. He didn’t take his eyes from my face, but I had faith that he didn’t need to look to know. “Then hold still,” I said.

There is magic in names. Mine had only been spoken aloud once before in all the world’s history. I was the sole living person who knew it. The sound, the shape of it would never leave me, even though by all rights I shouldn’t remember it—my mother had whispered it into my ear just after I was born, a tiny infant still red and wrinkled from the womb. This is how it went. I leaned forward. I placed my lips so close to the shell of Rook’s ear that when I spoke, in a breath quieter than a whisper, quieter than the folding of a moth’s wing, the warm air stirred his hair.

And so, I gave him my true name.

Sixteen

THE NEXT day the court buzzed with talk of the masquerade, which would begin at dusk. By the time the shadows lengthened I had not only completed a portrait for nearly all the fair folk in the spring court, but had also heard an exhaustive account of what each one was wearing, who had stolen fashion ideas from whom, and several deeply alarming suggestions of sartorial revenge.

The more portraits I finished without incident, the more I relaxed. By the time I’d reached the last fair one in line, I was cautiously prepared to believe my plan had succeeded. More of my subjects had had peculiar reactions to their portraits, freezing to stare at their faces or spending the rest of the afternoon in a state of distraction, but mercifully, neither they nor any of the onlookers seemed to catch on—for once their utter ignorance of human emotion worked in my favor. I was intrigued to note that just like yesterday, a clear pattern had unfolded. It was always the older fair folk who were the most affected by my Craft.

Of the ensorcellment, I felt nothing. The absence of my awareness of it was its most disturbing feature. I poked and prodded at the back of my mind as I might a loose tooth, knowing the tooth was loose, yet never detecting a wiggle. At times, I even wondered if Rook had applied it successfully. But he seemed certain, and there had been a change in the glade after I told him my name, a sort of sigh, as though all the trees and ferns and flowers had let out a breath at once.

And it was an ensorcellment, after all. If I was able to sense it, it wasn’t doing its job.

I stifled a groan when I stood, hoping my legs would recover in time for the dancing. My final subject was a tall, grave-looking fair one named Hellebore, who took his portrait with an amused bow. He examined it as he wandered off. Before long he pressed the back of his sleeve against his mouth, stifling an errant chuckle. He laughed again. Then he stumbled. And then he slumped against a tree, giggling helplessly, struggling for breath. His mirth wasn’t controlled, inhuman—it verged on hysterical.

I’d drawn him laughing.

Skin crawling, I knelt to tidy up my workspace, needlessly ordering the teacups and remaining strips of bark. Hellebore had walked far enough away that with luck, no one would notice and make a connection.

And then I caught sight of Foxglove. She’d paused in her game of ninepins across the lawn, observing him with narrow suspicion. When his laughter overcame him and he toppled to the ground clutching his stomach, she turned sharply to stare at me, nostrils flared and shoulders rigid.

“Isobel,” Gadfly said from his throne.

I braced myself and raised my head. He wasn’t smiling; his expression was serious, in a mild, pleasant sort of way. This was it. My very last portrait, and everything was over.

But he only went on, “I believe Lark has something to say to you.”

A teacup slipped from my unsteady grasp, knocking against its neighbors with a quiet clink.

Lark minced over from where she’d been standing next to Gadfly, half hidden by the throne’s flowering branches. Her face was impassive as she sank into a deep curtsy in front of me. Then, to my surprise, she burst into tears.

“I’m—I’m s-sorry I turned you into a hare, Isobel,” she stuttered out between gasps. Huge, woeful droplets dripped down her cheeks and off her chin. She sniffled noisily. Disquieted, I wondered if she was imitating me, the only example of weeping she’d ever witnessed. It wasn’t a flattering impression. “I only—I only wanted someone to play with.”