Clove fell asleep with flour still under his fingernails and woke inside a dream that wasn't his. A tall figure in an icy dress stood over him, her claws clicking like beetles. She wanted him to spoil the bread. Salt in the sugar. Mold in the proofing box. Burn the second oven. Clove shook his head. His mother had made him soup once, when she didn't have to. He wasn't going to ruin her shop. "No," he said. He felt his pointed ears go hot. "I won't." The fay's smile stretched too wide. Her long fingers brushed his cheek, cold as river stone. "Then we will remind you what we are," she whispered. "Sweet boy. Stubborn boy. You will wish you had listened." The dream broke like glass. Clove sat up gasping. Gray morning light leaked through his window. On his pillow, inches from his face, lay a cut branch of dusky thorns crowned with dark purple flowers. A drop of blood beaded on his thumb where a thorn had pricked him in his sleep. The threat was in the room with him now.

The thorn branch was still on his dresser when Clove heard the small sound through the wall. Crying. Quiet, the way Rosemary cried when she was trying not to. He slipped out of bed, ears hot, and padded down the hall. She was sitting up in the dark, hugging her knees, cheeks wet. "They came," she whispered. "The tall lady. She said I have to bring her something of Mama's. Or she'll—" Her voice broke. "I don't want to." Clove climbed under the blanket beside her and pulled her into his shoulder. "They came to me too," he said. "I told them no. You can tell them no." She shook her head against him, small and scared. "I'm not brave like that yet." "Then I'll be brave for both of us," Clove said. "I promise. Anything they ask you, you tell me first. I'll stand in front of it." Rosemary nodded into his shirt. Her breathing slowed. Outside the window, something moved in the dark, and Clove held his sister tighter, certain now that the fay were watching them both.

Clove came home the next afternoon to a house with all the lights on and no warmth in it. His mother stood in the kitchen with her hands flat on the counter. His father was on the phone. "Rosemary is gone," Madhuri said, plain as a closed door. "Since this morning. Her bed was empty." Clove's backpack slid off his shoulder. He wanted to say it. He wanted to say, I know who took her. Instead he walked to the back window and looked out at the garden. There, curling up between his mother's herb pots, was a branch that did not belong. Dusky grey thorns. Dark purple flowers, wide open, watching. "Did you check the garden?" Clove asked. His voice came out steady, which surprised him. Anand shook his head. "Police are coming. Stay inside, beta." Clove nodded. He pressed his thumb against the cold glass and felt the small scar there twinge, the one the thorns had given him before. They had said there would be consequences. He had refused. This was the bill. He slipped upstairs while his parents argued with the phone. In his room he pulled on his jacket and tied his shoes tight. He could not tell them. Telling them meant telling them everything — the ears, the swap, the fact that the daughter they were crying for had never been theirs by blood. So he opened his window instead. The thorn branch in the garden seemed to nod at him. Clove climbed out alone.

Clove cut across the back fields with the trees in sight. The wind shifted. A dark, coiling fog spilled out of nowhere and curled around his ankles, slowing his steps. From inside it, his fay mother rose — tall, sharp, blue as cold water, claws like wet branches. His fay father stood behind her, smiling without warmth. "Little Clove," she said. She held out a key woven from twisted wood and bright flowers. It glowed in her palm. "Take this. Open the door we show you. Do as we ask, and your sister stays whole. She comes home by morning. No bruises. No missing pieces." Clove looked at the key. It was beautiful. It was the kind of beautiful that costs you something later. He thought of soup on a tray. He thought of his mother's hands flat on the counter. He thought of Rosemary in a cage of thorns. "No," he said. His voice cracked, but he said it again. "No. I'm not your errand boy." He stepped through the fog before he could change his mind. The fay mother's smile fell away. The fog snapped shut behind him like a slammed door, sealing the field off from the road home. The key was gone. So was the offer. Ahead, the trees leaned closer, and somewhere inside them, his sister was waiting — and now there was no easy way back.

The field ended at a wall. Clove stopped short. What had been a thin tree line an hour ago was now a thicket twice his height, black branches braided thick as his wrist, studded with thorns and dusky purple flowers. The fay had grown it while he wasn't looking. He walked the length of it. No gate. No thin spot. Just thorns and the soft hum of something pleased with itself on the other side. He tried anyway. He picked a low patch and shoved his arm through. A thorn caught his sleeve and tore it. Another opened a line across the back of his hand. He pulled back and stared at the red bead rising on his knuckle. He pushed again at a different spot, harder, lowering his shoulder. The branches bent and snapped back, slapping his cheek. He sat down in the dirt and pressed his sleeve to his face. His ears, the pointed ones his mother had never asked about, burned hot. He was thirteen and bleeding and his sister was in there somewhere, and brute force was not going to work. Something moved near his boot. A small white mouse sat up on its back legs, watching him with shiny black eyes. Its front teeth were too long for its face. Not a real mouse. He knew the difference now. Clove dug in his pocket and found the heel of bread he'd taken from the bakery counter that morning. He broke off a crumb and set it on the dirt. Then he did the thing he'd been trying not to do. He reached for the fay part of himself, the part that felt like cold water under his ribs, and he spoke to the mouse without using his mouth. Show me a way through. There's more bread. The mouse's whiskers twitched. It took the crumb in both paws and ate it neatly. Then it turned and ran along the base of the thicket. Clove followed, dropping crumbs as he went, hating how easy it was. His fay mother had probably smiled the same way when she handed him the key. The mouse stopped at a place where two trunks crossed low to the ground. A gap. Not wide. Not friendly. But the thorns there grew outward instead of inward, and a person small enough could crawl under without losing skin. Clove dropped the last of the bread. The mouse ate, then vanished into the thicket like smoke. He knelt in the dirt and looked at the gap. He'd asked a fay creature for help and it had helped him, which meant he was using their tools now. He thought of soup on a tray. He flattened himself to the ground and started crawling through.