Olive gives me a sidelong glance and pouts. “Sometimes I think you never forgave me for that stunt with the bracelet.”
“Of course we forgave you!” I reply.
Olive’s eyes well up with fat tears and Ben springs into motion, tripping over himself to pass her a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” I say genuinely. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Olive is a hothouse flower, and in upsetting her I feel like I’ve let Rhion win.
“Can we please move on from this?” Faith sighs.
We spend the rest of our meeting talking through Rhion’s strange riddles (verdict: useless), Mor’s possible whereabouts (verdict: she could be back in the Otherworld by now), and ways to find the door between worlds (verdict: no one knows, and now that the Aurelia Vallen lead is dead we must start anew).
I return home feeling restless and unsettled. I whittle away therest of the day in the manner to which I have become accustomed: desperately lonely and sick with fear.
Pig curls up in my lap as I sit at my desk by the window and work on my correspondence. I start with the business notes needed after today’s meetings: the railway, the market town’s food supply, a pending issue with a London hospital. When they are done, I smooth out a fresh piece of parchment and begin a letter to Lydia, as I do nearly every night. I know it’s silly, but it makes her feel less far away.
It was another gray day here. I swear I can smell the sea on the wind. I miss London desperately, but am told we will stay in Bath through February. There’s a shop in town that bakes the most fantastic buns. I wish I could share one with you.
Your devoted sister,
Ivy
I close my eyes and try to picture my sister in the Otherworld. When we were little girls, we imagined it having fields of golden flowers and horses with wings. We’d jump around our garden pretending we were flying through the air on their backs.
I miss my sister. I’m nauseous with worry for her. But in these moments, when it’s just me and my thoughts, another emotion creeps in, sour in the back of my throat—jealousy.
Next, I write a letter back to Ethel, my father’s cousin, a woman in her mid-eighties who lives up north. We’ve been corresponding since I was a faerie-obsessed child. She was an eccentric adult who took me seriously, which felt like a lifeline at thirteen.
While I’m distinctly less enamored with the Others these days, she is still a beloved friend. She’s written me about her pumpkin crop. She thinks she’s likely to win the county fair this year with the biggest one her garden has ever produced.
I’m so proud!I write back next to a little drawing of an enormous pumpkin and a tiny Ethel beside it in her spectacles.
I save my letter to Emmett for last. Today has left me wrung out and exhausted, so I keep the message simple.
I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry.
I toss the letters to him and Lydia in the fire and watch silently as they curl into ash. Then I blow out the candle at my bedside and fall into a fitful sleep.
I am awoken at dawn to Bram’s nose nudging the bare bit of my shoulder where my nightdress has slipped.
“Tell me again,” he whispers in the dark, “the story of the faerie king.”
Chapter Four
He’s still in my bed when I awake in the morning, his crown of golden oak leaves discarded on the bedside table. His dark eyelashes brush the tops of his cheekbones.
I consider his beautiful face, his sharp jaw, his thick eyebrows, and wonder if faeries can be smothered to death. It would be so easy to reach over and grab a pillow.
He blinks up at me, bleary-eyed, as the morning sun leaks across the floor.
“Your present is downstairs.” His voice is hoarse with sleep.
“My what?”
He wipes his eyes. “The present I promised you at Rhion’s revel. It arrived last night. It’s downstairs.”
“Oh,” I reply flatly. I don’t want him to see that I am afraid. I rack my brain for what it could be. I pray he hasn’t brought my parents here. If I’m lucky, it’ll just be a new carriage.
“That’s all the excitement I get?” He smiles, and he looks so much like the boy from the spring, the handsome prince who I thought was only nineteen, who I believed might actually love me.
