“Then why are you angry?”
“You….you don’t understand why I’m angry?” I fumed. “You hurt someone I love, then use a kiss to spirit me away, brand yourself with my holy symbol, show me real faerie magyk, then shove me off a cliff, all in only a few hours, and you don’t understand why I might be less than pleased with all this…mayhem?!”
“Only the bestmayhemfor you,May,” he said, leaning in close with a wicked grin. I gritted my teeth against the taunt, then turned away and wiped the sheen of spray from my face using the front of my skirt. Just as I finished, my eyes fell on Will’s silver ring, and an overwhelming sense of despair shrouded my thoughts. He had refused to run with me, refused to throw the contest, then panicked, blindsided by Johar’s inhuman test of loyalty. It was clear now that, even if I made it home, our love would never see the light of day. Since he had kept none of his promises, I saw no reason why I should keep his ring. Fighting back a well of hot tears, I pulled it from my finger and hurled it into the lake. A finned hand shot up from the water to catch it, and I saw the splash of a colorful, scaly tail.
“Are you finished?” asked the Devil, who had come to stand behind me. “Or would you like to tear your clothing, beat your breast, and wail a lament for your lost love?”
I spun to face him. “Careful what you wish for, Devil. I will take great pleasure in wasting every minute of your precious time.”
“Since you mention it, time is something we cannot spare just now.”
“And why is that? Why do you need my healing gift when you clearly have your own?” I motioned to the burn mark on his chest, barely visible beneath the edge of his tunic. He glanced down, but merely shrugged.
“All the Fair Folk heal quickly. Our lack of time has nothing to do with your debt and everything to do with tomorrow being the changing of seasons.”
“The what?”
“You would call it the Autumn Equinox,” he said impatiently. “The day when the Fair Folk gather to celebrate, and to watch our beloved king and queen perform their sacred dance, which turns the wheel here in the Arden.”
I was breathless for a moment. “And…this happens tomorrow?”
“In the evening, yes,” the Devil said. “There’s to be a revelry. So, we must go quickly if we are to make you…presentable.” He ran his eyes over me again and I looked down at my simple gray dress, which was now filthy, torn, and wet. But the thought of attending a faerie revelry, with the Devil of Arden, no less, sent me into a fit of laughter. I doubled over, bracing my hands on my knees.
“NowI know this truly is a dream,” I gasped between breaths, shaking my head and turning back toward the lake. I heard him move closer, standing just behind me again, but still jumped when he whispered in my ear.
“Then why not make the most of it until the sun rises? If this is a dream, you will wake eventually, yes? Your precious Abbey, your darling Will, your garden, and your iron city. All will be just as you left them. So, why notletyourself dream for once, May? Let everything become as you would like it to be.”
He put an arm around me, offering his hand.
I hesitated, every nerve in my body screaming that this was no dream. Ever since making my bargain with him as a child, I’d lived with the knowledge that magyk was real, but fear had prevented me from seeking it out again. Now, here I was, surrounded by nothing but magyk, offered a chance to see it up close, to experience all the things I’d always been too terrified to even imagine. While that terror still held a near-death grip on my heart, there was also something else—an incessant, palpable itch nestled beneath my breastbone.
I had never truly belonged anywhere. Not with the Sisters, not in Nottingham, not out on the road with Tuck, and now not even with Will. The very last thread had been cut, unmooring me from a world in which I’d never found my place anyway. No longer knowing, or even caring, if I risked my life or my soul in doing so, I turned to look up at the Devil’s contradictory eyes.
Eyes that never seemed to see anything but me.
“Very well, Devil,” I said, placing my hand in his. “Show me a dream.”
I blinked once, and then we were beneath the trees again, in a wide hollow snuggled against the base of the foothills. With my eyes now fully open to its magyk, the Arden was even more enchanting—as if a shimmering mantle had been draped over every tree and flower and stone, every blade of grass and warbling bird. Their colors were richer, their movement more graceful, their sounds sweeter. Each tableau reminded me of the illustrations in Locksley’s library books. The Devil watched, propping himself against a tree trunk as I turned on the spot, greedily drinking it all in.
“How can you live in such a place?” I laughed, flinging my arms out and spinning.
“How could a creature like me live anywhere else?” he replied with an indulgent smile. “I offend the sensibilities of any right-minded human I encounter.”
I snorted. “Before you say I am not in my right mind, Devil, know that my sensibilities still find you quite offensive.”
“As they should. But thenyouought to knowthat all my favorite humans abandoned their right-minds long ago.”
“You know other humans?” I asked, turning to look at him.
“Have I made you terribly jealous, Mayhem?”
I wrinkled my nose at the nickname and said, “Not in the slightest. You did mention other captives, but if they are not in their right minds, then perhaps they actually enjoy your company.”
“Perhaps you should meet them before offering judgements,” he suggested, then cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “How doth the Arden greet her wayward children?”
The reply came in a ringing chorus that nearly made me jump from my skin. “With open arms and a merry smile!”
As I looked on, the Arden’s residents cautiously revealed themselves. Dozens of faces: young, old, dark, pale, male, female, and everything in between, appeared. They swung from tree limbs, popped up beneath patches of moss or out from behind rocks, ranging in size from no larger than an acorn, to taller than the tallest men I’d ever seen. As they emerged into the spaces between the trees, eyes pinned on me, I held my breath. But none seemed hostile—openly curious, or perhaps wary, but nothing like the malignant, unseelie creatures most people in Nottingham warned against. They were certainly as beautiful as the legends said, however, and just as strange as I’d always imagined. Many kept the general form of humans, two legs and two arms, while also boasting the wings of birds or insects on their backs. Some were also possessed of horns or antlers, tails, hooves, claws, feathers, and fangs of every variety. Others seemed to be creatures of the Arden’sflora, with skin and eyes in every shade of every flower or leaf, hair made of stems, tangled roots, or fluffy cotton, wearing petals or seed pods as garments.
