An Enchantment of Ravens(57)

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.