An Enchantment of Ravens

It didn’t escape me that he had not yet mentioned returning to the forest, or said anything about taking up the role of king, so the moment he started fidgeting restlessly in his seat, I had a reasonable idea of what he was working up to.

“Once,” he said, “I mentioned to you how succession works among my kind. How one prince is replaced by another. Or at least, how it used to work—the law can be different now.”

“Yes, and it’s awful,” I said with feeling. “Killing one another like . . . oh.”

Rook hadn’t been prepared for me to start figuring it out myself. He paled and continued quickly, “So, technically, as you are the one who defeated the Alder King, you’re now—well—the queen of the fairy courts. And I . . .”

I took pity on him. He was turning rather green. “Rook, I would be delighted to marry you and make you king. But first, I have one demand. It is of the utmost importance.”

I couldn’t tell whether he looked more relieved, or more frightened. “What is it, my dear?”

“I’d like another declaration, please.”

“Isobel.” He swept down to his knees and kissed my hand, gazing up at me in devotion. “I love you more than the stars in the sky. I love you more than Lark loves dresses.”

I startled myself with my own yelping laugh.

“I love you more than Gadfly loves looking at himself in a mirror,” he went on.

“Surely not that!”

My voice hardened, choked with emotion. “I don’t appreciate being used as a pawn in your game, sir.”

He looked at me a long moment in silence. “Ah, but you were not a pawn. All along, you have been the queen.”

I took a breath. His inflection was laden with some hidden meaning I didn’t have the patience to decipher. “And you are treacherous, and I’ll never forget the pain we endured by your design, no matter what came of it in the end.”

“Spoken, if I may say so, like a true monarch.” He smiled again.

“Gadfly,” Rook said, in a tone that suggested the spring prince was overstaying his welcome.

“Just one last thing, if I may.” Gadfly brushed some invisible dust off his sleeve and raised his eyebrows at Rook. “You are aware, I trust, that you are not yet named king? That there is a certain something you must—”

“Yes, I know!” Rook interrupted crossly.

I shot him a curious glance and discovered that he was nervously avoiding my eyes. He looked relieved when tentative footsteps crunched within the house, liberating him of the burden of explaining this “certain something” to me, and for the moment I was happy to forget all about it.

“Emma!” I called. “We’re safe! We’re in the . . . parlor.”

“I can see that,” Emma said calmly, picking her way into the room with the twins clutching both her hands. “There are holes in the walls. March, whatever you just picked up, don’t eat it.”

“Too late,” said May.

Emma shook her head. She scanned the parlor, and then the yard, and saw Gadfly, whereupon her eyes narrowed appraisingly. “Now who’s going to clean up this mess?”

“Oh, dear,” said Gadfly. “I’m afraid I must be off.”

A lone figure distinguished itself from the wreckage in the yard, fastidiously picking through the thorns strewn across the ground. His blond hair shone silvery in the sun, and he had changed his clothes since I had seen him last—he wore an eggshell-blue waistcoat and an immaculate, freshly tied cravat.

My gut clenched. Buried somewhere in my parlor, I still had an iron dagger.

Gadfly called out to us in a mild, pleasant voice. “And so the rule of summer is ended, and autumn has come to Whimsy. I do regret that spring is so far away, but that’s simply how the world works, and I trust that one day the seasons will turn again. Good afternoon, Rook. Isobel.” He halted several yards away and bowed.

Frowning, Rook returned the courtesy. I was bound by no such obligation, and glared.

“What a happy welcome,” Gadfly said. “I merely wanted to congratulate you both on a job well done.” His gaze shifted to me alone, and he smiled, a warm, courteous smile that wrinkled his eyes while revealing nothing. “You made all the right choices. How splendid. How singular. The moment you slew the Alder King, you destroyed every mandate he has ever made. You and Rook are free to live as you please, unburdened by the Good Law. The fairy courts will never be the same.”

Somehow I found my voice. “But you—you wanted . . .”

What had he wanted? Abruptly, everything fell into place.

A nauseating stench rolled from him. When he toppled over, a carrion beetle scurried from his ear and vanished into his beard.

His lips moved. “I am afraid,” he whispered, in a tone of dawning wonder. “I feel—”

His eyes drooped shut. Moss foamed up from the rug to engulf him. He’ll ruin the floor, I thought, strangely practical.

A gust of wind blasted us. Rook shifted, a shingle scraping beneath his boot. Then he stumbled and fell. Panic clutched me. I had a vision of a wooden splinter impaling his back while he protected me with his body. I dropped to the ground beside him, seizing his arm, wondering if he could survive a grievous wound without magic.

He looked more stunned than hurt, however, and as I ran my hands over him, searching for any sign of injury, his glamour flooded back over him. He caught my hand in his. “Look,” he said, but it was the expression on his face that made me turn around.

Wind swept across the field, bending the wheat in shimmering waves. As it spread outward, the colors changed. The leaves on the trees turned golden and scarlet and fiery orange. Soon the transformation set the whole forest ablaze. Stretching far into the distance, the only green that remained belonged to the grass verges bordering the fields and a handful of lone, tall pines poking through the canopy.

I pushed aside the pillows and stood. My knees gave way for the third time in twenty-four hours, and Rook caught me again, holding me up as though I weighed nothing. I reached for the portrait.

“Isobel,” he said. My hand paused. “I am not very good at—declarations,” he went on, after a hesitation. And then he hesitated some more, looking down at me, absorbing the sight, and seeming to forget whatever it was he had on his mind.

“I know,” I assured him fondly. “I seem to remember you insulting my short legs the first time, among other things.”

He drew up a bit. “In my defense, they are very short, and I cannot tell a lie.”

“So what you’re trying to say is that you love me, short legs and all?”

“Yes. And—no. Isobel, I love you wholly. I love you eternally. I love you so dearly it frightens me. I fear I could not live without you. I could see your face every morning upon waking for ten thousand years and still look forward to the next as though it were the first.”

“I think we disparaged you too much,” I breathed. “That was a fine declaration indeed.”

I seized his collar and pulled him down for a kiss, ghoulish countenance and all, ignoring his muffled sound of protest, which did not remain on his lips for long. His teeth were sharp, but he kissed me with such tenderness and care it didn’t matter. A flower blossomed inside me, a soft, rare bloom aching for light and wind and touch. In another world, it might have been our last kiss. In this one, I wouldn’t allow it.

“What is this?” he asked in a low, hoarse voice.

“It is you, Your Majesty.”

He looked at himself. He saw his own face as it wasn’t, and yet was: a ruler who had sat on the throne for countless millennia, but who had felt every loss great and small, endured every burden of his interminable lifetime. A being who had loved once, and was perhaps even loved in return. His mouth trembled. A tear tracked a gleaming trail through the dust on his cheek.

“You said that you dreamed, Your Majesty. You said you wished for something. What is it?” I adjusted my grip on the back of the canvas. Metal, warmed by my body, shifted against my palm.

His face contorted. “How dare you . . . how dare you show this to me?” His words rose in volume until he howled in a broken voice like a storm tearing through trees. The walls shook, and branches whipped against the house outside. “I do not dream. I care nothing for trifles, this dust you call Craft.” He raised his hand, preparing to strike me down. Yet still he couldn’t take his eyes from his portrait.

Now. I threw myself forward. The Alder King did not see the threat in a mortal girl flinging herself against him, armed with only a canvas and wet paint. What he did not see was his undoing. With the full force of my weight behind it, the iron dagger slid through the painting, between his ribs, and pierced his heart.

“Listen to me,” he croaked. “Both of us need not die tonight. Isobel, you cannot break the Good Law alone. If the fair folk sense I am no more—”

I seized the dagger from him. Having no idea what to do with it afterward, I lifted the cushion I was lying on and shoved it underneath, then threw my weight back on top. “Stop being melodramatic! I am not going to kill you in my parlor!”

He stared at me in disbelief. “Did you just sit on it?”

“Yes,” I said mutinously.

His fingers stroked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It would not be like a mortal dying,” he said. “You have seen it. I will leave no body behind. There will be a tree, perhaps. A bigger one than that absurd little oak outside your kitchen.”

I couldn’t stand it. I choked on a laugh. “Show-off.”

“Yes.” He gave me half a smile. “Always.”