16

16

Y ou must be insane," Hero said bluntly.

The four of us were sitting under the oak tree by the stables, shaded from the scorching midday sun. A barely touched spread of cold bacon-and-egg sandwiches and fruit sat in front of us. Inside the stone building, I could hear the faint thwap of a horse's mane being shaken and the low comforting crunch of hay being devoured. Otherwise, the open land was eerily quiet. Alden had cast a ring of silence to keep us from being overheard, but it was scarcely necessary. There was nobody here except us.

I had come downstairs very late that morning, still muddle-headed from the long, strange night. The other three had already been awake, packing breakfast into a picnic basket in a triumph of determination over skill. We were going out, Hero had explained to me, to get out of the servants' way and find cooler air. I had known, even before Alden caught my eye meaningfully, why we were really leaving the house, and what was about to be proposed once we were far from curious ears. Yet it had still been a shock to hear what we had discussed last night spoken aloud, dragged into the light of day. I had been expecting Alden to tell the other two about the imp windows for weeks; I hadn't realised, until I saw the surprise on their faces, just how dangerous our experiments had been, and how much we had been keeping from them. And that was without taking into account the truly disturbing news: the existence of the faerie door itself. Not only was I now doubtful that the other two would agree to our proposal to open it, I was becoming uncomfortably aware that in their position, I would never agree myself.

"That's what you said when I said I was going to wear a gold waistcoat with a green suit to the Christmas party," Alden answered Hero blithely. "And it was brilliant."

"That's a matter of opinion. This isn't. And don't you bloody dare act like this is nothing, Alden. Do you think I can't see now what you've been doing?"

"What have I been doing?"

"You manipulated me. You persuaded me to help you investigate the fae, right here, last summer, because you told me that making a breakthrough like that would be to my advantage. You swore to me that it was a purely theoretical exercise."

"You didn't really believe me," Alden said. "You know me better than that."

"I thought I did," she agreed. "I thought you would try to do something stupid sooner or later. I had no idea you already had a faerie door open down the corridor off your bedroom, and had done since you were twelve. That seems like something you might have mentioned to me years ago."

"I would have liked to have known too," Eddie remarked, with just a trace of irony. He was sitting cross-legged, quiet, twisting a blade of long grass in his fingers. He didn't look at any of us. "You know, at some point."

I thought it was time to step in. "We can do this." Hero turned to face me, and I immediately wished I'd stayed quiet. I'd seen Hero's disapproval in action before, often employed on my own behalf. Having it directed my way was withering. I couldn't help but feel she could see exactly what had happened between Alden and me the night before, and the thought made me blush to my soul. Nonetheless, I pressed on. "I know we can. The four of us have been working on faerie magic for months now."

"I know exactly how long we've been working on it, Clover Hill." The use of my full name, strangely, stung. I could tell it wasn't affectionate this time. "I've been working on it longer than you have. But I thought we were working on it with the intention to present a paper to the Faculty. That's quite a different prospect to opening a door and trapping a faerie for your own ends. I don't appreciate being lied to."

"I thought that was the intention too! Believe me, I thought this was as insane as you did last night. I was as surprised as you are now when I found the door."

"You might not have known about the door. You might have told me you've been opening imp windows all over Oxford."

That stopped me short. I realised far too late that Hero wasn't simply shocked or disgusted or even angry. She was hurt. I remembered the sting of seeing the two of them in the archives all those months ago, of learning the secrets that had been kept from me when I'd thought we were starting to be friends. This was a much deeper betrayal. We were more than friends now—we were family. I had lied to her. And the worst thing was, a part of me had been enjoying it. I had felt as though I were circling the outside of the group in that first term, and this had brought me inside.

Was that why I had invited Eddie into the project too, all those months ago? So that someone would always be just a little further out than me?

"I'm sorry," I said weakly. I turned to Eddie, trying to include him in the apology. He wouldn't look up. "I promised Alden I wouldn't. And until last night I didn't realise it meant anything."

"It isn't Clover's fault," Alden said firmly. Any lightness had fallen from his voice now. "I made her keep the imp windows a secret, and I never said a word to her about the Ashfield door. Perhaps I should have told you all earlier, I know, but it truly was for your own protection. You two, especially—if you'd known the door was here when the three of us were growing up in this house, you would have drawn the faerie's attention the way I did, and believe me, you wouldn't have wanted that. It's a nasty piece of work. It nearly had Clover last night, before I got there."

Hero raised an eyebrow. "And… you want to bargain with it?"

"Yes!" He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "I do. I want to force it to put things right. I want it to give me Thomas back. Is that so difficult to understand?"

"The desire? No, not at all. It's the part where you genuinely believe you can succeed where so many before you have failed that baffles me. The Accord exists because the fae aren't safe, Alden. Not only the circles—the fae themselves. Changing the method of dealing with them only changes that so much."

She wasn't going to agree. I could see it in her face, in the straight-backed stance and the glint in her eyes. Despair settled on me like a blanket.

"Please," I heard myself say. "It's my brother too. I have to help him. We fought, the last time I went home. About Camford, and the war, and everything. I just…" I wasn't making sense, and I knew it. I couldn't put into words how it all tied together—my guilt over Matthew going to war, my shame over leaving them for Camford, the need to prove that I had been right. The urgent feeling that the world had broken, and we had to fix it now or it would just continue to crack further along the same lines. But Hero was looking at me again, her face softened, and I blinked away tears.

"Please," I repeated.

Hero sighed. "It isn't that I don't want to help your brother," she said, in a gentler tone. "You know I do. I want to help Thomas, for that matter—I loved him too. But what you're proposing—"

"What are you both proposing?" Eddie interrupted, looking up for the first time. His jaw was set; his eyes met mine directly, without flinching. "Exactly. What do you need the four of us to do?"

I looked at Alden, my heart unclenching just a little. Perhaps it wasn't hopeless after all.

He returned my look, and I saw his own relief flicker before he turned back to Eddie.

"The trick," he said, "is to close the door at the precise moment the imp—or, in this case, the faerie—has passed through one door but not the other. The only way to find that moment is to have someone stand with their hand to the edge of the door, and signal as they feel it start to cool. In practice, one of us has stood in the circle while the other stands by the door. This time, though, Clover and I will both need to be in the circle to make the deal, and to ensure the spell is strong enough. We need one of you—preferably two, one on each side—to stand by the door and give us a signal. And once we have it trapped, we need you both to hold the door with a locking spell. That, I imagine, will definitely take two of you. It took one of us to hold the imp window."

"Why does it need to be held? The fae can't usually break through a closed door."

"They can't break through a door closed on both sides. This will only be at half strength. And judging by the imps, they can summon a good deal of will when they're truly trapped."

I remembered how the door had shuddered and blazed under my fingers, the first time I had been the one to hold it. I said nothing.

"That's all you need to do," Alden added. "You won't be in the circle—it can't take you. You're just telling us to slam a door shut, and holding it shut once we've done it. It sounds simple enough, doesn't it?"

"I think it sounds dangerous," Eddie said frankly. "A second too late, and the faerie would be through."

"It wouldn't get far," I said. "The usual circles would be there, if the worst happened. There's no reason to assume that what happened at Amiens would happen again. This isn't a battlefield."

"No, just four people who have never summoned the higher fae before, making God knows what kind of mistakes. I want to help Thomas and Matthew, I do. I just don't think this is the way. Hero—"

He turned, looking for support, but Hero's lips were pursed thoughtfully.

"If this does work," she said slowly, "then it really would be momentous. Forget the kind of research the Faculty couldn't ignore—we could take this straight to the Board, to the papers, to anyone who would listen. We needn't tell them we'd done it, of course, not yet. But we'd know for sure it would work."

"Exactly," Alden said. "It wouldn't matter what happened at Amiens anymore. We'd have the ways and means to safely deal with the fae. The Accord could be lifted, because of us."

Hero nodded, and her face hardened. "I'd like to see my father take me out of Camford then."

"Except," Eddie reminded her, "it isn't safe. If the faerie does come through—"

"It won't," Alden said. "Clover and I have practiced this for months. We can practice again now, all four of us. The two-door method will work."

"Will it really?" Hero asked suddenly. "No, Alden, you shut up, I'm asking Clover. You'll just tell me what you want to believe. Clover, is the scholarship sound? Is there any reason for it not to work?"

Here is where I have to make another confession: I knew what I should have answered. If Alden had told Hero what he wanted to believe, as she quite rightly predicted he would, it would have been because he had truly made himself believe it. That was how Alden's brain worked, what made him so convincing and so difficult to resist. He was absolutely capable of persuading himself. I wasn't. The scholarship was sound, as far as it went. But the scholarship was far from perfect, especially when we were learning out of scraps from old books and illegal experiments. I remembered the moment when the imp had broken through, all claws and snarls and flashes in the dark; how helplessly we had laughed afterwards, when it was one umbrella-strike away from being not funny at all. That could happen again, of course it could. Our timing was still an instinct, not a science. I remembered the jolt of fear when it had leapt from the circle as though the chalk lines on the floor held no power at all—and we never had determined for certain why that had happened. All of this rushed to my mind in a surge like a landslide, and I pushed it away with the same force.

"If we do everything the way we've planned," I said evenly, meeting her gaze, "then there's no reason in the world it won't work. The scholarship all checks out, Hero. I promise."

She sighed. "I'll have to see the notes for myself," she warned. "But if I agree, then very well. I'm with you."

Relief swept over me in a wave. I nodded tightly, eyes suddenly hot. "Thank you. And I really am sorry—"

"Don't thank me," she interrupted, but her voice was more resigned now than angry. "This is my best chance of staying at Camford, as you well know. As far as you two go, I haven't forgiven you quite yet for keeping things from me. I probably will, though. Give me until this evening. And for God's sake, don't let there be any more secrets."

"Believe me," Alden said with a wry smile, "opening a faerie door and accidentally wishing my brother through it is as far as I go. I'm not that interesting. Thank you."

She allowed him a faint twitch of a smile in return.

"Eddie?" Alden prodded, not unkindly. "Are you with us? It would be a lot more likely to succeed with your help."

"I know." Eddie's voice was unexpectedly bitter. "That's what's unfair. Do you think I don't know what will happen if I say no, and you don't attempt this? Thomas will stay trapped, Matthew will stay cursed, Hero won't be at Camford next year, and you'll all blame me. How could you not? It would be my fault."

Even Alden looked taken aback. "Well," he said, after a pause. "Possibly. Although by that logic, you refusing could be saving our lives."

"We'd never know for certain, though, would we? All we'd know for certain would be that I'd stopped you. If I stopped you. If I actually thought I could, then I might do it, and let you hate me—I've survived worse. But I wouldn't, would I? You'd go ahead without me."

He was looking at Alden, and Alden answered. "If it was up to me," he said, "then yes. I can't do this on my own—the trap won't work. Even two would be difficult. But if Hero agrees, and I have Clover on the inner circle… I would try it without you."

"And then," he said, "whatever happened would be my fault too."

I forced my throat to work, my tongue to move. "It wouldn't be your fault," I said. "And nobody's forcing you to do anything. If you don't want to help, then…"

My voice dried up. Because that had already come out wrong, hadn't it? Of course he didn't have to join us in breaking the most important law of magic—of course no one had any right to force him. It wasn't a question of not wanting to help . I simply couldn't quite bring myself to tell him not to do it. I wanted it too badly, and I feared that he was exactly right—without him, it either wouldn't happen or it wouldn't work.

Eddie looked at me for a long time. His face was still, and it was impossible for me to see what thoughts were turning behind his cloudy-sky eyes. "No, I'll do it," he said at last, abruptly. "If there's a chance, then… I do want to help. Of course I do."

I reached out and squeezed his hand on impulse, and he smiled faintly as he squeezed it back.

"Thank you," I said. "Only if you're sure. I mean that."

I didn't, really, and he must have known it. The most I can say for myself is that I tried.

"It's only a faerie, after all," he said, with his best attempt at bravado. "My grandfather always said there was no real harm in the fae. You just have to be firm with them."

"Well, then," Alden said, and if he sounded calm, I could see the excitement brimming behind his eyes and fizzing under his skin. "It looks as though we're summoning a faerie."

We did it at midnight.

It was the most powerful hour, according to the textbooks, the space between one day and the next. For the same reason, we also decided to do it on the first night of August, Lughnasa. It was one of the nights my brother's curse was strongest, when the veils between worlds were thinner, when deals between mortals and the fae had traditionally been brokered. If we were successful, I told myself when my nerves wound so tight they threatened to break, it would be the last night it would ever have any hold over him again.

I had worried our friendship would be poisoned after that morning by the stables. The first day or two, it was—there was a faint unease, a lingering distrust, an occasional hesitation before one of us would speak that hadn't been there before. But, like a fever rising to combat a toxin, once we started to prepare for Lughnasa, the wild secret rush of it submerged everything, and we fell back into the old patterns of research and brainstorming and practice as though nothing had ever happened. In some ways, we were closer those few days than we had ever been. Hero visibly cast off the weight of her father's plans, now we had a plan of our own to thwart them. Eddie said nothing further about his doubts and threw himself into the research as though determined to look neither back nor to the side. Alden was lighter, happier, freed from years of secrecy; I, in turn, was freed from the guilty secret of our nights in the Bodleian. I hadn't noticed the subtle tension those silences had created between us until it dissolved like a sigh of relief.

Neither Alden nor I spoke of what had happened between us the night I had found the faerie door. That seems odd to me now; at eighteen I was glad of it. I wasn't sure what it had meant to me, what I wanted to come of it, whether I was more afraid of Alden wanting more from me or wanting nothing at all. Yet the energy between us had changed, blazing and tangible like the silver light that had flooded the room. I would be aware of his movements a heartbeat before he made them; I suspected, by the way he would pass me my glasses before I reached for them or shift to make room for me before I sat down, that the feeling was mutual. We barely touched, but every glance we shared was a shiver on my skin.

Midnight at Lughnasa arrived hot and dry and airless, the kind of night that feels breathless with anticipation. All four of us had been the same all evening, so high-strung and overexcited that I'm sure every member of staff knew something was happening. Fortunately, Alden's parents were away again, and Morgan was too well-trained to give us more than a very shrewd look as he served us our supper and we burst into giggles for no reason.

Any laughter had died by the time we stepped into the room with the faerie door. It was dark, without that eerie silver sheen, and when we lit the oil lamps, the shadows were ghost-like and trembling. I wished, not for the first time, that we were doing this in one of the rooms at Ashfield that had electricity.

"I never did like this room," Hero said with distaste.

"That's utter rubbish," Alden said absently. "You never gave this room a second thought in your entire life."

"If I don't like something, darling," Hero said, at her most Hero, "then that's exactly how I treat it."

Their bickering would have been comforting, had it not been just a little too fast and too glib. I could hear the nerves beneath it.

We set to work like clockwork, books sprawled on the floor for reference. Two circles. The simple ring for us to stand in, the ring that would allow us to receive and channel faerie magic. The second ring, the binding ring. The ring that had broken at Amiens and caused so much trouble. It shouldn't be needed, of course. We drew it anyway, just in case.

The faerie door we didn't need to draw. It had been there, waiting, for years.

"Hero, Eddie, can you two stand on either side of the door?" Alden stood from where he had been putting the finishing touches on the runes, brushing chalk dust from his hand.

I checked the runes yet again, just to reassure myself. To my unpractised eye, they were perfect. Even if a faerie made it through, it would get no further than most. Faerie bargains used to be made all the time. It had rarely been dangerous before Amiens. It would be even less dangerous now. Surely. Surely.

"Is everybody ready?" Alden asked briskly. He was addressing all three of us, but his eyes were asking me.

It wasn't too late to stop all this. And yet the thought was unbearable. It was like being poised on a rope, waiting to swing out into the river. The anticlimax of stepping down, of missing that thrill of weightlessness, was so much worse than the niggling worry that the water was dirty and I just might drown.

I stepped into the circle beside Alden. His hand slipped over mine, held it, and I felt a quiver of electricity before he squeezed it and let it fall.

"Thank you," he said quietly, then looked over at Hero and Eddie. "All of you."

"Well, go on," Hero said, but softly. "We haven't got all night."

Together, as we had the very first time we opened the imp window, Alden and I spoke the words of the spell.

We had pitched well together before. This time, after months of practice, we were perfect. Our voices blended, strengthened each other, and a surge of power spilled through me and out into the world.

The lines of the faerie door glowed bright silver, and the air was suffused with light. Its cool metallic scent coated my tongue—and something sharper this time, a tang like salt air or petrichor. Faerie country.

The faerie was waiting. The door was barely open when the silver glow turned its cooler blue. Eddie caught his breath; Hero snapped, "Now!"

We didn't need the signal after all. We could see it: a shadow against the door, tall and slender, human but for the head that tapered into fragile antlers.

Alden and I spoke as one. The door slammed shut.

"Hold it!" Alden ordered, and Eddie and Hero flung their spells against the door.

Not a moment too soon. There was a shriek like the wind on the moors, a flash like lightning; the lines buckled, swayed, shuddered. Then the faerie door was translucent as a pane of frosted glass, and there was a faerie standing behind it.

I had seen illustrations of the fae in Lady Winter's books. I had seen pencil sketches and engravings, watercolours and oils, even one blurry photograph. I had known what to expect. And because of that, all I could think was it looked utterly unreal. The long, thin limbs, almost insectoid, glowing a soft silver white; the gossamer-thin wings; the wild white hair and green eyes enormous in the pointed face. It was like the first time I had seen the Houses of Parliament in London, that perfect postcard image, and couldn't shake the familiar thought that I'd like to see the real thing someday even as I stood before it. I thought of the Cottingley faerie pictures that had taken the country by storm the year before, the eerie superimposed, paper-thin quality of the tiny figures. This faerie had exactly the same painted look—only it was transparent, at least six feet high, and unquestionably alive.

There was only one unexpected thing. The fragile antlers I had seen weren't antlers at all. They started at the shoulders, entwined around the forehead, spiked above it in a silver-brown crown delicate as spun sugar. Branches.

"It's a dryad," Eddie said, very quietly. "A silver birch."

"You can't get through," Alden said, in what seemed to me in that moment more wish than fact. "You're trapped in the space between doors. We want to negotiate."

It spoke. I had always imagined the fae to have upper-class voices, soft and precise. I don't know why. Perhaps Camford had tricked me into thinking magic the sole province of the aristocracy. This faerie had a voice like the rustle of leaves, or the trickling of water, and I know, I know what a fanciful simile that sounds, but if you ever meet it, you'll understand exactly what I mean.

"At last. It's been a long time since any doors between our worlds opened. I was starting to think you didn't need us anymore."

"It's been illegal since Amiens," I heard myself say foolishly. "All the doors were locked."

My voice caught the faerie's attention for the first time. Its head tilted to regard me. "I know you, don't I?" it said. "I'm sure I do. Have we met before?"

"I found this door, earlier," I said. "You spoke to me."

"I remember. It isn't that I mean, though. You weren't there when I last came through, were you? At the battle?"

Amiens. My breath caught in a rush.

"You were the faerie who broke through at the front," Hero said. Of all of us, her voice sounded the most sure, which I knew meant she was at her most scared. She was the same at university events and college dinners, when the older men would sneer at her and me as though we didn't belong, and she would raise her head a little higher and plant her feet a little firmer. "The one who killed all those people."

It wasn't just a dryad. It was the same dryad.

"They didn't all die," it said. "There are three still on this earth. I can feel them. Oh!" Its eyes went back to me. "One of them was yours, weren't they? You're too young to have a son there. A father?"

I had to swallow before I could speak. "A brother."

"That's what it is. I've tasted your blood. My curse is running through his veins. Is he why you're here?"

I glanced at Alden, whom we had agreed should make the first deal; he nodded at me, encouraging.

"Yes," I said.

There was no time for second thoughts now. This was it, the moment of the bargain, at least on my part. Yet I had never been expecting to make a deal with the same faerie that had cursed Matthew and killed so many others besides. I had thought for days about how to phrase the deal, and as I spoke the words they still sounded like the beginning of a folk story of how yet another stupid farmer's daughter was tricked by the fae. I could practically hear children groaning as their mother read it to them around the fire.

"I want you to tell me how to break the faerie curse that binds my brother Matthew Hill." That wasn't enough, of course. "I want you to let me use that knowledge to break it. And I want him to survive the breaking with his mind and body and soul intact."

It considered, head tilted to one side like a praying mantis. "And this is why you summoned and bound me? This is your condition for my release?"

No going back now. "It is. On my part. Alden will make his own terms."

"I can give you the spell you ask for. Be warned, though, from a human it can only be so powerful. If the curse is too close to his heart, there will be nothing you can do." It paused. "Of course, if you were to let me inhabit your form, I could perform it. It would work then, even were he moments from death."

I shook my head firmly. That mistake, at least, I wasn't going to make. "No. I'll perform the spell. That, and the guarantee he'll survive it sound in body and mind, will be enough."

Matthew's curse had been far from his heart the last time I had seen it—surely it couldn't have progressed so far in the last few months. Either way, it was the best chance he had.

"Very well." The faerie seemed to expect my answer. "Then I make that deal. Do you know how to make it binding, human girl?"

"Don't do it," Eddie said abruptly. It was the first time he had spoken since the dryad had appeared. "I know we agreed, but that was before we saw it—before we knew who it was. I understand the reason for the Accord now. It wants something."

"It's too late now," Alden said, without looking in Eddie's direction. "We've trapped it. We can't hold it forever, and we can't release it without at least ensuring its promise to depart. We have to make a deal."

"Both of you don't. And not so dangerously. You could just make a deal to let it go."

Alden laughed, a short bark without humour. "Let it go? Do you have any idea how long it took me to trap it?"

"Do you have any idea how long it took the oak tree at our house to grow?" Eddie returned. "Two hundred years, give or take. But when it was old and dangerous and liable to fall on the roof, my father had it cut down. It doesn't matter how long something's taken to grow when it's rotten at the core."

The faerie ignored this exchange. It was looking at me, its green eyes fixed and unwavering. I have never been looked at like that before or since. It made the rest of the world recede into white noise.

"Do you know?" it repeated.

"Yes," I said. "I have to give you permission. I give it."

I felt nothing. The faintest contact across my forehead, more like the brush of a leaf than a human finger. But with a shiver like an epiphany, I knew . I knew the words to release a human from a faerie curse, and the steps that went with it. I knew how to free my brother. It felt less like being told than remembering. I fell back, breath catching.

"That's it?" Alden asked. "You have the spell?"

I found a nod. "I have it."

I had done it. I had bargained with a faerie for my brother's life, and I knew how to save him.

The faerie turned its head slowly, deliberately toward Alden. "And you? I know what you want, don't I?"

"I want Thomas back," Alden said. "Alive, unaltered, and unharmed. You stole him from me."

"You asked for him gone."

"I asked for him to be safe from the war."

"And he was."

"The war's over now," Alden said. "We're in a new world. I want him in it too."

"And you know what I want from you in return." Its voice was flat, even by fae standards. "I've told you many times. Your body in exchange for your brother's safe return."

He shook his head. "I'm only offering your release, as Clover did. Make the deal, or be trapped here forever. Those are the terms."

"I might be prepared to agree to them," the faerie said. "Under certain conditions."

Alden opened his mouth to ask the obvious question. He never had the chance. Hero's voice broke in sharply, "Look out!"

For a second, I couldn't see what she meant. Then I saw, and my heart stopped in my chest.

The door was opening. The great silver lines were wavering, parting; the light from beyond was spilling out. All our careful spells were pinging away like buttons from a coat.

That was why it had been talking to us—why my deal had come so easily. All the while our attention was focused, it had been eating away at the clever new magic we had devised to trap it.

"Hold it!" Alden snapped—at Hero or Eddie or both, I didn't know.

"It's no good!" Eddie shouted. His face was pale and slick with perspiration. "The spell isn't strong enough. Not for this."

Another crack, and the door split farther. Beyond it, against silver that scalded my eyes, I caught a glimpse of a vast landscape. It was windswept and overgrown, all vines and thorns and wasteland for miles and miles. Wind ripped through the room, an endless scream of cold and rain and the heady scent of pine; my hair was torn loose and my skirt billowed about my legs. I couldn't breathe.

Alden's face was absolutely white. He was saying something, something about the circles. I could barely hear him over the noise. I could barely hear myself when I shouted back.

"The circle." I raised my voice even further, past breaking point. "It'll hold, won't it? We're still safe."

I heard him this time.

"The circles don't work!" It was what I had suspected, for a long time. But Alden wasn't voicing a suspicion. Somehow, he knew. "They haven't worked since before Amiens. I should have told you, I know, I'm sorry. They're useless."

This was what had happened at Amiens. It came to me with a flare of pure terror, the worst spark of understanding I had ever felt. Private Koenig had made no mistakes. The fae had found a way to break through the binding spells. Had we not left one door closed, this one would have torn through at once. Now we had only moments until the door cracked all the way and the faerie stepped through, in and then out of the useless circle, to the world beyond. And Alden had known it all along.

Had Camford known all along too? Was this why the Accord had truly been brought in?

No time to worry about that—or rather the time had passed. We had one hope, and only one. I raised my fingers, braced against the wind.

" Beclysan ," I said, and twisted them into a fist.

I had performed the spell a hundred times—on imp windows, to shut my door behind me at Camford, to lazily close a book sitting on my desk. It should have worked. This time, though, I felt the wind fighting against it, the spell reverberating back at me. I gritted my teeth, and tried again.

Alden saw at once what I was doing. He fell into line, mirroring my stance, pitching his voice exactly to mine. Our spells blended and entwined, strengthening like a twofold cord. Again, and our voices wound tighter, so that I could feel the edges of Alden's mind pushing against mine. It was the closest I had ever synched with another mage, and in the midst of terror it was intoxicating.

It was working. The door was closing. Little by little, inch by inch, the silver was rebinding, knotting back together. My muscles throbbed, my dress was soaked with perspiration, and I gritted my teeth and performed the spell again.

Beclysan. Beclysan. Beclysan.

Then, mid-spell, Alden stopped. His magic pulling away from mine was a physical blow; I stumbled and had to grab at his arm to stay in the circle. He was burning fever-hot through his shirt, and I could feel him trembling, a thin current under the buffeting of the storm.

"Thomas," he said, soft with wonder.

I looked up, squinting through the wind and the flare of silver, tears from both fogging my glasses.

"There's nobody there, Alden! It's a trick. Keep going."

"He's there. I can see him."

"There's nobody there!"

Except—was there? Behind the terrible winged shape of the faerie was a faint shadow—a trick of the light, of magic, of the faerie itself, I couldn't tell. It came closer. Still closer.

We had paused too long. The door was opening again. The light behind it was blazing, brightening, burning.

"Alden!" I grabbed his arm tighter, willing him back, and he shrugged me off with a force that nearly had me out of the circle again. The roughness I had seen as he sleepwalked was back, the glazed look that had been pure terror and now was a horrible sheen of hope.

He wasn't going to help. As long as there was a chance his brother was coming through the door, there was no way he would close it. He would let the door open, or even open it himself, and the faerie would rush into our circle. It would slip into one of our bodies—Alden's, probably, he was the one it had been waiting for all these years—and then it would be able to walk through the world unhindered.

I didn't think. I shoved him as hard as I could, out of the circle, where he could neither do any harm nor come to any. His attention was all on the shadow beyond the door; he stumbled and fell to the ground with a cry of shock. I didn't stop to watch him fight to his feet, against the roaring wind. I turned to face the oncoming faerie, moved my hands once again to position.

My voice was something between a scream and a sob. "Beclysan!"

The room was filled with silver now. It glowed so brightly I couldn't see, so thick it was almost liquid; the buffeting of the wind and rain was a living, bruising force. Black things shot across the air around me, and I couldn't tell if they were leaves or branches or books or bits of the house falling down. I could no longer feel my feet on the floor. I could no longer feel my fingers to work the spell.

The spell wasn't going to be strong enough with me working it alone. It couldn't be.

" Beclysan! " I cried, one last time.

I can't describe what happened then. I have only fragments, all flashes and gaps, like a film montage or a letter scored through with a censor's black pen.

The wind tearing at my clothes, endless and hungry. Light like the stars had split apart. A sharp cry and a crack like the fall of a great tree.

I felt an impact on my shoulder, a single hard blow, the floor rushing up to meet me.

I felt the world billow and snap like a sail in the wind.

And then I felt nothing at all.