Something was wrong. This wasn’t because of any prank. Nicasia’s anger was too intense, Cardan’s hatred too vital. And Locke seemed half in and half out of the action, as though he was a willing but unenthusiastic participant.

“Please,” I whispered to Locke. “Do something.”

“Ah, but I have,” he told me, not looking in my direction as he spoke. “I’m protecting you.”

And then all at once I recalled the way he’d smiled at you at the revel, in front of Cardan, and how he hadn’t been to see me since. Recalled that you and I are identical twins. He was protecting me, sure. Protecting me by tricking them.

He’d made them think you were his lover.

And the way you’d stood up to them—well, you practically confirmed it.

“No,” I whispered. “She’s my sister. You can’t do that to my sister.”

“You ought not worry. Look,” he said, his gaze lingering admiringly on you, wet and cold and defiant. “She’s strong enough to bear it.”

I am ashamed to say that his words were enough to make my sympathy sour. And though we walked home together and I wept with an excess of horror and guilt, wet and cold and overwhelmed, I would not tell you why. I didn’t tell you anything. I didn’t speak.

Of course, it wasn’t like you said anything to me, either.

That night, shivering before the fire, I plucked the petals from flower heads in a divination I didn’t learn at any palace school.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

Locke still didn’t come.

I woke to Vivi jumping on my mattress, shouting about going to the mortal world. She was in high spirits and would hear no arguments against it. You just seemed exhausted, sagging against your ragwort steed as we flew over the sea. I petted the rough green skin of mine, pressed my cheek against its leafy mane, drank in its grassy smell. I loved Faerie, loved magic. But right then, it was a relief to be leaving it for a while.

I needed to think.

Look, I admit that I was jealous of the way he’d openly admired your defiance.

I tried to tell myself a story. In “The Princess and the Pea,” a girl came to the door of a palace in distress, her gown soaked and muddy, her skin chilled. She was a princess, she said, but her carriage had been turned over and her servants had been separated from her in a rainstorm. She only needed a bed for the night and some food. The queen wasn’t sure if she believed the story. The girl was very beautiful—beautiful enough that the queen’s son was staring at her in a decidedly moonstruck fashion—but was she really a princess? There was only one way to find out. The queen instructed that a pea be placed beneath dozens of mattresses. Only a princess’s skin was sensitive enough for such a small thing to bruise her.

Maybe Locke liked that I was sensitive. He’d protected me, maybe he wanted someone who needed protecting. But I wasn’t sure.

Plus I thought you were mad at me.

I really did. After all, I’d climbed out of the river, leaving you behind. I’d kissed that monster Cardan on both his cheeks.

And, even if you didn’t know it, I was the reason all this had started. “You’re probably mad,” I began.

“I’m sorry,” you blurted out at practically the same time, looking, if anything, more miserable than before. Then, realizing what I’d said, you just looked confused. “At you?”

“I swore to Cardan that I wouldn’t help you, even though I came with you that day to help.” That was the least of what I had to apologize for, but I couldn’t tell you the whole truth. I’d promised Locke I wouldn’t tell anyone.

You seemed frustrated. “Really, Taryn, you’re the one who should be angry that I got you tossed into the water in the first place. Getting yourself out of there was the smart thing to do. I would never be mad about that.”

Of course I had been angry, but when you said that, I felt guiltier than ever.

Vivi had ideas about funnier and worse pranks you could play on the prince and his friends.

“No!” I interrupted, horrified.

What Locke had done—even if it was awful to you, it was a grand gesture. It meant he cared for me. And now Nicasia and Prince Cardan had had their fun and humiliated you. Now, maybe if you didn’t provoke them further, they would stop.

Locke hadn’t visited me in days. Surely whatever they thought had been between Locke and you, they must believe it was over. That they’d ended it. That they’d frightened you off.

But before you promised to back down, Vivienne dropped the bombshell that she had a mortal girlfriend and was leaving Faerie forever.

“Here’s my plan to cheer you up,” Vivi said, leading us through a shopping mall. “We all move to the human world. Move in with Heather. Jude doesn’t have to worry about knighthood and Taryn doesn’t have to throw herself away on some silly faerie boy.”

I tensed at that, remembering that she’d helped me send the note to Locke, but she didn’t say any more. She was too busy trying to convince us that we didn’t want to stay in Faerie because she didn’t, and leaving us behind made her feel bad.

What she didn’t understand was that there was nothing in the human world for us, not even our own names.

I looked our story up once, in a library. Pulled articles onto the computer screen. Our parents’ murder had caused a bit of a sensation because of the swords. In a world of guns, swords seemed old-fashioned and a little bit funny. Weird couple dies weirdly. There was wild speculation about an affair gone wrong, and a few of Dad’s medieval reenactment friends gave quotes that tried to play down the salacious angle. But since the papers mostly chose photos of them in costume, that only made things worse.

The articles presumed that the children would turn up. Some of our clothing was missing, toys were gone. Maybe we’d be found after a few days, having slept in the forest, blanketed in leaves brought by considerate sparrows. But, of course, we weren’t.

We were never found at all.

Heather turned out to be a pink-haired artist who exchanged such a fathoms-deep glance with Vivi that I couldn’t even begin to interpret it. Despite that look, I couldn’t help wondering how Vivi could possibly love a mortal girl. She didn’t know anything. She had no magic. She didn’t even seem like she’d done much suffering.

I should have found it inspiring—after all, if Heather and Vivi were in love, then love was possible between mortals and faeries—but it made me feel uneasy instead. Like maybe they’d used up all the luck there was.

Or maybe it was because I was thinking about how Mom had started out a lot like Heather. She fell in love with someone who didn’t tell her the truest truth, who let her believe that he was human, who brought her into a world she didn’t understand, a world that chewed her up and spat her out. A world I was hoping wouldn’t do the same to me.

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.

By the time we were heading back toward our ragwort horses, I think Vivi realized that if she was leaving Faerie, she was doing it on her own.

I tried to imagine Elfhame without her. Everything would be a little more frightening. There would be no legitimate heir to intercede with us with Madoc. No one to go to for little magic. And worst, no way to reconsider. Without her to make us a flying pony from weeds or a boat that would travel by puffs of our breath, there was no way off the isles.

Before, it was important that we found a place we belonged in Faerie, but with Vivi leaving, it was imperative.

“You’re going to have to tell her eventually,” you said, still talking to Vivi about Heather. About Faerie. About lies of omission.

I tried not to feel called out by the words, even though they could have just as easily applied to me.

“Love is a noble cause,” Vivi reminded her. “How can anything done in the service of a noble cause be wrong?”

By late afternoon, we were back on the palace grounds, attending a lecture so dull that I dozed off in the middle of it. You and I sat in the branches of a tree to have our lunch. I took care not to glance too much in Locke’s direction—even though I was eager to—and Prince Cardan and his companions seemed to have tired of us. You seemed to be actually trying to avoid trouble for once. I let myself relax. I let myself believe that the worst was behind me. I let myself pretend.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Taryn and she had a faerie lover who came to her at night. He was generous and adoring, but visited only in the dark. He asked for two things: one, for her to keep their meetings secret, and two, never to look upon his face fully. And so, night after night she took delight in him but, after some time had passed, wondered what his secret could be.…

My daydream reverie was interrupted by Prince Cardan.

“I know what you did,” he drawled, voice low, not at all sounding like he was asking a question. “Wicked girl. Yet you let your sister take the brunt of my ire. That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

He was dressed in a velvet doublet, with buttons of carved jet. Loose black curls framed his sharp cheekbones and a mouth set in a cruel line. He’s handsome, but that makes his horribleness worse, somehow. As though he’s taken something nice and made it awful. Being the single focus of his attention made me feel like a bug that a child was going to burn with a magnifying glass.

I stammered, caught completely off guard. “I—I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t.”

A slow smile spread across his mouth. “Oh, I see why Locke likes you.”

For a moment I thought that might be almost a compliment.

“You’re awful.” He said it as though he was delighted. “And the worst part is that you believe otherwise.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I hated that I cried so easily. And he was wrong. I hadn’t known. Not until that afternoon by the river.

I shook my head, wiping away tears. “Does that mean you’re going to leave her alone now?”