The other girls and I wait, still and silent as Rhion gathers himself. He glances down to where his hands are clasped in front of him and then back up to us.
“I saw her for the first time in the middle of the afternoon. She was on her hands and knees, helping a maid who’d dropped a tray. Her voice was soft as she reassured her. I hadn’t seen anyone do anything that kind in four hundred years. It’s embarrassing to admit, but Lydia wanted little to do with me and I was too much of a coward to show her my true nature. I was afraid of Bram noticing just how much I noticed her. But I did... I noticed everything. She learned every servant’s name and thanked them constantly. She played with the cook’s children, spinning them until they laughed so hard they could scarcely breathe. A window in my room overlooked the garden and I watched her there, most days. She spent hours on her knees coaxing the castle grounds back to life, and then leaving a trail of petals on the stairs back up to her room. She was—” He takes a breath as if the force of his own feelings has made him unsteady. “I’ve lived for a very long time, but I’d never seen anyone so full of life.”
My eyes well with tears picturing Lydia as he describes her, happy in the Otherworld. “You could be lying about this, too,” I say.
Rhion just shrugs. “But I’m not.”
And I shouldn’t believe him, but I do. In my time among the Others, this is the most genuine show of emotion I’ve seen.
“What of Emmett?” I ask.
Rhion shakes his head sadly. “I do not know. Bram doesn’t speak of him and I haven’t returned to the Otherworld since the day of your wedding, when he brought me here. I asked about Lydia when he was drunk enough to tell me where she was, but he said nothing of Emmett.”
“But he has to be there, right?” I prod. “Bram wouldn’t have killed him, would he?”
The corners of Rhion’s mouth pull down. “I no longer know what he’s capable of.”
Rhion follows us up the hill to Faith and Marion’s home on Queen Street.
Their poor housekeeper jumps upon seeing us all pile through the door and hurries off to the kitchens to fetch us stacks of cucumber sandwiches, scones, and miniature mince pies.
We send their footmen off with urgent letters and soon the five of us are joined by Ben, Eduart, Este, and Olive.
She rushes into the candlelit cellar and pushes the hood of her gray cloak off her head. “It’s spitting rain out there.” She pauses. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” Her eyes land at the head of the table. “And why ishehere?”
Rhion tips his hat to her. “You’re under an enchantment.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bram has you under an enchantment. Every morning at elevenyou go to the ruins of the old Roman baths and you feed and care for Queen Moryen, who is locked up there.”
Olive’s chest flushes. “I do not!”
“We saw you today, darling,” I say gently. Between the glassy look in her eyes then and the genuine shock on her face now, I believe that Olive is completely unaware of what she’s been up to. I know she’s not that good an actress.
Rhion extends his hand. “Kiss it and I’ll undo it.”
“What?” Olive gasps, scandalized.
Rhion rolls his eyes. “A kiss for a broken curse. There needs to be an exchange. There’s a way about these things. Quickly, please.”
Reluctantly, Olive brushes her lips, just barely, against the smooth skin of his knuckles, below a thick emerald ring.
She blinks hard a few times and then murmurs, “Oh... oh. I am sorry.”
I touch her shoulder. “You didn’t know.”
“But I could have told you where she was. All this time we’ve been discussing it and it was locked somewhere in my head.”
Emmy shakes her head. “Don’t concern yourself. You showed us in the end, didn’t you? We followed you today, that’s how we found her.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ben pipes up from the edge of the room.
Marion and Faith try not to laugh. Only Faith succeeds.
“And it’s where we found Rhion.” I explain the circumstances of his being there.
“Which brings us”—I slap my hands down on the pockmarked old table, more excited than I’ve been in months—“to the matter of the door. Rhion, I’ll let you take the lead.”
