All through dinner at Madoc’s long table, where Oriana fussed over little Oak while Vivi made faces at him and you stabbed at your venison, I was hopelessly distracted. My thoughts strayed again and again to Locke. Later, in the parlor, I tried to finish the embroidery I was adding to my velvet cape, but I stabbed my own finger with the needle, over and over, until even Oriana asked me if there was something wrong.

Do you remember that night? You sat before the fire, limned by flames, polishing a dagger, your brown curls tumbling over your face. I wanted to tell you about the note, but I was afraid that if I did, you would warn me it was some kind of trick. That Locke was just trying to humiliate me. You knew he was a boon companion of the youngest and worst of the princes of Elfhame, after all. You knew what Locke and his friends found amusing: cruelty.

But Locke didn’t do the worst stuff. He wasn’t like Prince Cardan, who listened to weeping like it was fine music, who stole selkie skins and tried them on, who smashed and burned enough things that it was said he was no longer welcome in his father’s palace.

At least I didn’t want to believe that Locke was like him.

I didn’t want the note to be some kind of trick.

You know I hate it when people don’t like me. I hate it that the Folk look down on us for being mortal. I comfort myself with the knowledge that they need us, even if they don’t like to admit it. They need mortal lovers to bear their immortal children and mortal ambition to inspire them. Without us, not enough babies would be born, not enough ballads would be composed, no less sung.

And I comforted myself that I understand their baroque customs, their love of courtesy. Which was why I couldn’t let Locke’s note go unanswered. Etiquette demanded some kind of response.

Of course, it didn’t demand that I agree to meet him.

Instead of telling you about my dilemma, I went to Vivi. She was outside, staring up at the stars.

“Prophesying?” I guessed. Neither you nor I have been good at seeing the future in the skies. Neither of us can see in the dark well enough to note the movement of the stars accurately.

Maybe if we’d been better at it, we could have seen what was coming.

Vivi shook her head. “Thinking. About our mother. I was remembering something she’d told me.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. You know how Vivi is, cheerful when things go her way, and brooding when they don’t. She’d been touchy the whole week before, sneaking off to the mortal world whenever possible. She’s like that around the anniversary of us coming here and the anniversary of that one time we tried to leave for good. But I didn’t need her moodiness. I needed her advice.

Vivi’s voice took on an odd, distant quality. “I was in the bath, drowning boats and sending plastic sharks after them under the bubbles. I must have been very little. And Mom said to me, ‘You must be particularly kind to people. Other kids can act like monsters, but not you.’”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said, although I couldn’t help feeling a little resentful that Vivi had so many memories of Mom and Dad, while I couldn’t recall their faces with much detail.

“I thought so, too.” Vivi shrugged. “So I went back to drowning ships.”

“Oh,” I said, puzzled.

“But maybe I should have listened.” She turned toward me and fixed me with her eerie, cat-eyed stare. “I’m not sure I ever learned how to be particularly kind. What do you think?”

I didn’t like to admit it, but sometimes Vivi frightened me. Sometimes, for all her love of human things, she seemed entirely alien. Especially when I feel like just another of the human things she loves, possibly out of the same nostalgia for her childhood that makes her yearn for mortal movies and songs and comics.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that way. Maybe I should have talked to you about it. Maybe I should have talked to you about a lot of things.

“Well,” I said, seeing my opening. “It would be particularly kind to help me right now. A boy sent me a note and I have to send him one back, but I’m not sure what to say.”

I took it from my pocket, feeling a frisson of hope and fear when my fingers touched the paper, half-expecting it to be a product of my imagination. I could feel my cheeks grow hot as I handed it over.

You have to understand, I never thought it would come to anything bad for anyone but me.

Vivi read the message, perfectly able to see in the dark. “Locke?” She seemed to be trying to place his name. I wasn’t sure if she was teasing. “So, you’d like to meet this boy under the moonlight? Steal a few kisses?”

She made it sound so easy. “What if this is a joke? A game?”

She turned to me, head tilted, her expression pure confusion. As though I had no reason to be afraid of a broken heart. She had no idea how dangerous a broken heart could be. You do, though. You know.

“Then I suppose you’ll have a laugh before you kick him in the shins for causing trouble,” Vivi said with a shrug. “Or bring one of Jude’s blades and chase him around with it. You got the same instruction in swordplay she did; you must remember some of it.”

“I was never very good. I kept apologizing when I hit anyone,” I reminded her.

Madoc wanted to teach at least one of us his trade—the art of war. I am sure he hoped for Vivi. But it was you who wanted to learn. You who had the real affinity. You who kept at it when he knocked you down.

You used to say that I was good. That I learned the moves easily. But I didn’t want to know them. I hated the idea I might have to know them.

Before Elfhame, I thought of us as just the same. Twins. We wore the same clothes. We laughed the same way and at the same things. We even had our own weird language, which was supposed to represent how our stuffed animals talked. Do you remember that?

There were differences, of course. I was always shy. And you never turned down a dare, even when it got a tooth chipped chasing one of the neighbor kids around the concrete edge of a pool.

But those differences didn’t seem important until Madoc came. Until you attacked him while I sobbed. You tried to hit him. Uselessly. Foolishly. You ran at him like you didn’t care if it cost you your life.

After that, it was like everything was a dare you couldn’t back down from.

And you started not telling me things. Like how your finger came to be missing or what happened the night that no one could find you. I am not the only one who hid things. You hid plenty.

Now you’re probably saying that I am making excuses. That I’m not really sorry. But I am just being honest. And I am trying to tell you the story the way it happened.

“So forget him, then,” Vivi said.

I didn’t listen. “Maybe it’s not a game. I still need a way to send him a note back.”

“Get Jude to distract him, and while he’s looking at her, drop the paper into his bag,” she suggested. “Or you go talk to him and she can do the slipping. He’ll expect that less.”

“Jude doesn’t care about boys,” I told her, maybe sounding harsher than I’d intended. I was terrified at the thought of being caught by Nicasia, or worse, by Prince Cardan. Giving Locke the note on the palace grounds was completely out of the question. “All she cares about are swords and strategy.”