“Because I’m going to my room, obviously. I can’t stay here with you.”
“I need to keep you safe. I can’t do it if you’re not with me.”
“Oh, all of a sudden you’re worried again about keeping me safe?”
“When did I stop worrying about that?”
I am amazed he is asking me this question. I have never before realized how annoying it is that he’s a faerie. “When you left me!”
“I have left you plenty of times before. We have never spent every moment together, you and I. Why, now, does my leaving you mean that I’m not keeping you safe?”
“Because I asked you not to leave, Ben,” I snap at him.
He sits up on the bed, which I am glad about, because at least now it seems like he’s taking this seriously. “You asked me not to leave. I disagreed with that. We never had a conversation about keeping you safe and whether I ought to worry about it anymore. You made that decision all on your own.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You almost died in the dragon pit. Did you not wonder why, all of a sudden, you could fall to your death if you didn’t want to? My mother put her hand on you and you couldn’t stop it.”
I already know the answer to that. “Because you took the enchantment off me.”
“Because you fought it off. I didn’t take it off you—you wouldn’t let me keep it on you. You’re lucky you fell in the dragon pit where I could get to you.”
“If you hadn’t left,” I point out hotly, “I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the dragon pit. Not without you, at least.”
Ben sighs and falls back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling.
“How did you know I was in danger in the dragon pit?”
“You’re carrying my talisman,” he says dully, not looking at me. “You’ve broken the spell, but the talisman links us. You were in distress, and I felt it.”
“I’m in constant distress.”
“Not like that.”
I think of the blind panic I’d been in as I fell in the dragon pit and consider that I have not been that panicked before, not even in Park Street, because then I had options, escape routes I was planning. In the dragon pit, I had given up hope, and maybe that had been distress enough to reach out for Ben, even though I hadn’t known I was doing it.
I let silence fall for a moment. My hand is still on the doorknob, still ready to leave, but I’ve realized there’s so much I don’t know and so much Ben does know. I need to ask him, I need to make myself ask him, here, now, because if I walk out of this room, I don’t know if I’ll ever have enough courage to face him this way again.
“Is everyone else in danger?” I ask.
“These are dangerous times. Everyone’s in danger,” he says to the ceiling.
“I mean Kelsey and Safford and Will.”
“They’re fine. They won’t be harmed. They have nothing to do with the prophecy.”
“The Unseelies tried to kill me at the dragon pit.”
“How did you fall into the pit?”
“The bridge disappeared.”
“Ah. The spell functions by itself. There isn’t an Unseelie paying attention to it and deciding who should cross and who should not. It senses threats and it breaks of its own accord. It’s an automatic reaction.”
“Oh, great,” I say, throwing up my hands. “Automatic reaction. That’s fine then. Don’t trouble yourself too much over the fact that I was almost eaten by a dragon.”
Ben sits up again. “Of course I’m troubled over it, Selkie,” he snaps at me. “But I’ve been trying to keep you safe, and you keep trying your hardest to thwart me at every turn, so I don’t know what you want me to say here. Am I troubled that you were almost eaten by a dragon? Yes! Of course I am! But you shouldn’t have been anywhere near the dragon! You should have been home! In Boston! Where it’s safe!”
“It isn’t safe in Boston!” I shout back. “How can you possibly think that? The Seelies are trying to get through the enchantment.”
“The Seelies have been trying to get through that enchantment for centuries!”
“But they’re succeeding now! The sun went out! And the clocks stopped and then they started back up again and now it’s almost twelve o’clock!”
Ben stares at me. “Is that true?”
“Yes!”
“Then we’re running out of time!”
“Exactly! And it’s all nice for you—you found your mom and she made you your childhood room and wants you to stay here with her forever—but in the meantime, the world out there is falling apart and you’re not helping.”
“I didn’t know,” Ben says. “I thought there’d be time.”
“You would’ve known if you hadn’t left,” I point out.
Ben, for once, doesn’t have any kind of smart retort to that. Which I guess is as close to an apology as I’m ever going to get.
“You’d also know if faeries had thought to enchant cell phones into being at any point,” I mumble and sit at Ben’s desk, because I’m feeling exhausted suddenly, like if I don’t sit, I might collapse.
“We’ll get the information from my mother at the feast,” Ben says.
I don’t know what to say to that. Like, great, Ben thinks it’s going to just be that easy. I thought it would just be that easy too, and then I met his mother and she wasn’t like that at all.
There’s a coat draped over the back of the chair I’m sitting in. A black coat with feathered epaulets and spangled over with threads of silver and gold. I run my hand over it. I can think of nothing less Ben-like.
“Where did you get this?” I ask.
“My mother. That’s the coat she was talking about.”
“Well.” I stare at the coat and try to come up with something nice to say about it. I settle on, “It was nice of her to give you a gift.”
“It’s hideous,” he says flatly.
“Well, it is—”
“It’s undignified,” he interrupts me.
“Ben,” I point out, “you just rode a giant corgi. Hasn’t the indignity boat sailed?”
He flops back onto the bed with a huff. “Corgis are royal forms of transportation,” he protests.
“Were the corgis we would see on Boston Common sometimes faerie dogs?”
“Don’t be absurd. Those are pygmy corgis.”
“They’re miniature corgis, like miniature Great Danes?”
“No, they’re ridden by pygmies,” he responds matter-of-factly, as if this makes perfect sense.
It’s the kind of conversation I feel like we could have had before, on the Common, watching dogs and their owners go back and forth, sipping lemonade that Ben has made. We wouldn’t have talked about faeries—I didn’t know there were faeries to talk about back then—but we would have talked about something silly and innocuous like this. I would be worrying about the prom, and whether I wanted to go, and whether I could get Ben to ask me. Such a silly, stupid thing to worry about. I had been such a silly, stupid girl. When I should have been worrying about my world being destroyed, about my aunts and my father in a Boston that’s going to pieces, about a prophecy I am baffled by at every turn.
And I am crying. Hard. I can’t get myself to stop. I put my face in my hands and try to stifle my sobs so Ben won’t know, because the whole thing is humiliating.
As if he’s somehow going to not notice this inelegant, embarrassing, sniveling display.
“You’re crying,” he says from his bed.
I cry harder and bury my face harder in my hands, trying to catch my breath.
“You never cry,” he says. He sounds amazed that this is happening.
It’s true. I don’t cry very much. It’s probably why I feel like I’m so bad at it, like now that I’ve started crying I’ll never stop, that I will cry for the rest
of my life, here in this underground castle that makes me feel claustrophobic, enchanted window notwithstanding.
Ben’s touch on the crown of my head is feather-light, and I jerk away, but he tugs me closer, and I shouldn’t but I stop fighting and cry messily into his neck. The only thing worse than crying is crying alone, with no one there to comfort you. I need him and I can’t even be hard on myself for that. Ben pulls me off the chair and we land in a heap on the dirt floor. He lets me cuddle into his lap and sob, and he holds me closer, silent and patient.
“I’m so tired,” I manage in hiccupping, bursting gasps. “I’m exhausted. I am exhausted from being part of some stupid prophecy that everyone wants me to fulfill—but nobody knows how I should fulfill it—and everyone expects me to know how. But every time I try to do something—anything—it turns out wrong. I brought everyone here—because I thought your mother would help—but it doesn’t seem like she’s going to help—and meanwhile I don’t know where my family is—and faeries keep getting named in the Otherworld—and it’s all falling apart.”
“Shh, shh, shh,” Ben murmurs and strokes at my hair. It’s not telling me anything useful, but it doesn’t matter. It literally feels like the best thing he could do for me right now.
I do not cry forever. I reach the end of it eventually and find myself sniffling instead of sobbing, my head against his shoulder and my nose nudging at his collarbone. “This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you,” I tell him and sniffle again.
“Selkie Stewart,” he breathes, fluttering across my skin. He chases my name with a barely there brush of his lips. And then he says, “Your face is wet.”
And I actually laugh against him.
CHAPTER 9
There is a bathroom attached to Ben’s room, through a door in the wall that is hidden until he calls it into being. There is a shower in the bathroom, and I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life. We can’t do anything until after the feast anyway, so I let myself take a shower. I stand directly under the flow of the water, letting it course through my hair and over my face, and my fingertips wrinkle into prunes and I don’t care. The water is hot and comforting; with my eyes closed, I could be home. I know that I am not, but I feel that the feast ahead of me is not going to be fun, and taking a shower feels like such a wonderfully normal thing to do. I don’t think of my aunts and my father and all the people that I am helpless to protect right now. I focus on the water, beating down on me, flowing over me, and just don’t let myself think.
I have no idea how long I stand in the shower before someone knocks on the door. It’s probably Ben, and I know that, but I still get tense under the spray of the water, opening my eyes and looking at the gleaming, metallic tiles on the wall in front of me. They don’t look like normal human tiles, which is why closing my eyes is necessary to keep up the illusion of being home.
“Who is it?” I call cautiously, although what am I going to do if it isn’t Ben?
“Me,” Ben calls back. “Can I come in?”
I’ve locked the door, but that, of course, means nothing at all to Ben. The shower curtain is dark and metallic, like the tiles around me, and there is no way Ben is going to see anything, and I trust him not to try to look anyway. It’s not like Ben has displayed much of a tendency to try to take advantage of me. “Yes,” I assent.
I hear the door open immediately, as if it was never locked at all.
“It’s wet in here,” Ben says. I can hear his nose wrinkling with disapproval.
“I’m showering,” I point out. “Water is involved.”
“It’s time for the feast.”
I sigh. “I figured.”
“My mother brought you some clothing.”
“Is it a dress with little bells?”
“No, the Unseelies don’t like bells.”
“Is it a sparkly black coat?”
“No. It’s just a dress. I’ll leave it here for you. And now I have to close this door. It’s entirely too unpleasant in here.” He does so immediately, ducking away from the humidity.
I take a deep breath and turn the shower off and step out into the bathroom, drying off. I towel-dry my hair as best as I can and then pull it back into a ponytail. The dress Ben’s mother has brought for me is a bright springtime yellow; it reminds me of chicks and corn and sun. All the dresses I’ve seen here have been sunny colors—I wonder if that’s a consequence of being stuck underground. And I wonder why Ben’s coat is so full of night by contrast.
I look at myself in the mirror. My white-blond hair doesn’t darken much when wet, but at least it stays back, no wisps escaping around my face. The yellow dress isn’t really my preferred color—I like to wear shades of blue to match my eyes—but it fits me beautifully. Probably an enchantment.
I step out into Ben’s room. He is wearing his usual layers to try to protect him from ever being wet ever—Ben is actually allergic to water, which sounds weird but makes total sense when you’re a faerie. This time, the layers are a deep lavender polo shirt and, peeking out underneath, a tangerine-colored T-shirt.
“Ready?” he asks.
“You’re not wearing your coat?” I say to him, dropping my clothes in a heap on the chair.
“I hate that coat,” he replies.
“It might make your mother happy if you wear it.”
“That’s a quaint notion,” Ben remarks, and his eyes linger on the coat. “I don’t like the coat. It makes me feel…I’m not wearing the coat.” He turns determinedly toward the door and tugs it open.
“Should I wear my sweatshirt?” I ask, and I sound almost shy.
Ben pauses and looks back at me. “I don’t know,” he answers evenly. “Should you? That’s your decision.”
I hesitate then I pull it over my head, and I try not to analyze my motives for doing so.
The hallway is very dark after the brightness of Ben’s room.
“If they can enchant sunlight,” I ask Ben, “why don’t they enchant this whole place?”
“They can’t enchant sunlight,” he responds as we walk swiftly down the hallway. “My mother can. This way.” He pulls me through an open archway that appears to our right, and all of a sudden we are in a vast banquet hall. The ceiling soars over our head, with dark chandeliers dripping from it. The table is made of stone, as are the chairs, and everything seems rough and uncomfortable and barely serviceable. The table is crowded with faeries in bright clothing, tearing into food with loud enthusiasm. There is a large cluster that is laughing raucously to one side, and the Erlking appears to be in the middle of that, telling a story that apparently requires many hand gestures, not all of them respectable.
It is easy to locate Will and Safford and Kelsey; they are the silent, still ones who are watching the proceedings with a slight frown. And next to them, at the very head of the table, sits Ben’s mother.
She rises as we approach. “Ah, there you are,” she says in welcome. “Don’t you look lovely,” she purrs at me and then frowns a bit at Ben. “You didn’t wear your coat.”
“Maybe next time,” Ben responds lightly and sits down.
I sit opposite him, and food appears on our plates. Fruit. I was looking forward to something more substantial, but fruit will definitely do.
Kelsey, beside me, has already stripped her bunch of grapes clean. She is dressed in pale pink, the color of a barely there sunrise. Her long blond hair, like mine, is pulled back into a wet ponytail.
“There was nothing else I could do, so I figured I’d take a shower,” she says to me.
“I had the exact same thought,” I agree. “So have we…?” I make a gesture that I hope can be interpreted as asked Ben’s mother the important question and gotten the answer so we can get out of here and pop a grape in my mouth. It tastes like soda.
Kelsey shakes her head a little bit.
I look beyond Kelsey to the res
t of the table. It is almost exactly the way dinner used to be in the Seelie Court, loud and disorganized, with wine freely flowing. The Erlking seems to be a much greater attraction than any of the other Unseelies; most of them are hanging on his every word. He is still telling a story, although he keeps pausing now to take sips from the spout of a small teapot he is holding.
I turn back to my plate. There is now cheese on it as well, and I take an experimental nibble of it. Coffee.
“Perhaps,” says Ben’s mother, “you are interested in the history of the Unseelie Court.”
“Actually,” I say, because it’s time to get this show on the road—I have no idea what time the Erlking’s pocket watch reads now. “We’re looking for the other fays that you hid.”
“We are all of us misfits here,” says Ben’s mother as if I haven’t spoken at all, “cast out by the Seelies in their capricious rule. We welcome all who come to our door.”
Will, who is sitting beside Ben across from me, looks at Ben’s mother with his eyebrows raised.
“You disagree, Mr. Blaxton?” asks Ben’s mother scathingly.
“Not at all,” replies Will in a silky tone that means just the opposite. He holds Ben’s mother’s gaze and sits back in his chair, sipping his wine.
Ben’s mother continues, her voice brittle now and her hands tight around her rough tin fork and knife. “It is hard for us, cast out, here below. We are creatures who crave the light. If the eternal darkness sometimes drives us to actions that are, shall we say, questionable, who can condemn us, living a life so contrary to our natures?”
I pick up one of the tin knives and slip it into my pocket. The last knife I took came in handy.
“Who indeed?” Will responds and raises his glass in a little toast. I know it is mocking, but it is mocking under the surface. Outwardly he is nothing but calm respect.
“We really need to know about the fays,” I insist. “The ones you hid. If you could try to remember—”
“As if I would forget!” she scoffs at me. “I am famous for my remembering.”
“Then maybe—”
“If it were time for the prophecy to be fulfilled, then the fays would have assembled together. If you are still all alone, then it is not time.”
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