There was so much happiness in his voice as he told me he was good at being a regent. It was to him that I first admitted out loud that I was proud of my work as queen.
And I don’t believe anyone deserves to rule a country, not in the way Queen Mor did, with a grip so tight it choked the life out of its people. But if Emmett and I had had more time, perhaps wecould have created an England that was built for more than just the aristocracy. Where girls could aspire to more than just marriage and your family name didn’t determine your fate. Perhaps if I’d had the chance, I could have been the kind of ruler who didn’t speak the loudest, but amplified the voices of those who matter most, society’s most vulnerable members.
It was easier when I didn’t let myself want anything.
Once I started, I wanted everything too much.
Will Bram give me a funeral after I starve to death? I wonder. If so, what will my tombstone read? Ivy, queen of England? Or Ivy Benton, the most gullible girl in the world?
The lux flower shifts toward periwinkle.
I was queen.I laugh audibly at the thought, it’s so ridiculous.
Whatever else happens, he can’t take that away from me. I may have only ever been a means to an end, to him. But I was still queen.
Will he allow England to mourn me? Will he tell my parents? Will he open the door so that I can be buried there?
Rhion’s words come back to me.Bram is the door.
I’ve long wondered how Lydia returned to London from the Otherworld if Bram didn’t open the door for her. Vaguely, I figured Queen Mor must have been the one to let her return, as part of their bargain, but it doesn’t make sense with what Lydia has since told me about her escape or what Mor said about assuming it was her ex-husband who sent her back.
But what if no one opened the door for Lydia? What if she opened it herself? After all, she was Bram’s wife. She was queen of the Otherworld.
And Bram would have underestimated her.
What if in her panicked escape, she accessed the magic that was her right by way of marriage?
And if she escaped, maybe I could too.
I close my eyes and search through the deepest, darkest parts of me.
I picture Kensington Palace, with its checkered floors and grand staircase. I imagine my old attic room back at Caledonia Cottage with its narrow bed and window that looked out onto the green of Kensington Park.
I reach for it, my hand outstretched. I open my eyes and find—nothing. Nothing but the darkness of the cell and that flickering lux flower.
I take a steadying breath and attempt it once more. This time I focus not on what home looks like but how I felt there. My chest grows warm as I think of Emmett teaching me to waltz in front of a roaring fire, of Olive baking bread in the kitchen of the cottage, of Lydia helping me into my dress on my wedding day.
I’ve already lived the best days of my life, and I didn’t even know it.
Agony pierces me. I can’t help myself as I let out a wail of despair.
Something deep within me shifts. My hands tingle, even the ruined one. My head feels lighter than it has in days.
Perhaps it’s death.
My eyes are so heavy that opening them seems like a herculean feat. It would be so easy to slip into the darkness, to let myself be carried away by the tide of it.
I could find Ethel and Greer and Emmett’s father and the girl in the deer mask and tell them how sorry I am.
It would be the easiest thing in the world. I know that with a certainty that reaches to my soul. I would be welcomed and made whole in death.
But what a waste it would be to give in to something because it is easy, when I’ve come this far.
The smell of damp earth and floor polish hits my nose.
With every last amount of strength I have, I pry open my eyes.
In front of me is a perfect rectangle of light, the grand foyer of Kensington Palace visible within it.
