She fights a smile. “You’re too stubborn for your own good. I knew you just needed a push.”
I roll my eyes, but she’s too focused on her landscape-in-progress to notice. She flicks her paintbrush, and a smear of yellow starts to become a field of flowers.
“Where is she now?” Lydia asks again, perpetually the older sister.
“In bed,” I say flatly.
Ivy banged on my door for what felt like ages after I slammed it in her face. When the pounding slowed to nothing I peered into the hallway and found her asleep at my threshold, splayed out like a doll.
I cursed under my breath, sure the castle staff had given her a sleeping draught. I don’t want her tangled up in all the substances so readily available here.
I scooped her up and carried her back to her room. She flinched awake as I opened her door and blinked up at me with her big brown eyes.
“Emmett?” She sighed my name.
“Shh,” I soothed her. “I’m just putting you in bed.”
“Stay with me,” she croaked, voice small.
I looked down at her in my arms and wanted nothing more than to slide into bed with her, wrap my arms around her, and never move again.
I tucked her under the quilt and watched as her blond curls fell in a cascade over her pillow.
Every part of me ached, like a fire had been lit inside of my chest and was spreading through my bloodstream until even the tips of my fingers were in pain.
Ivy fought hard to keep her eyes open, but even her strong will was no match against a faerie sleeping draught.
“Sweetheart,” I said so low I hoped she couldn’t hear me. Here she was,my girl, not dead, but alive andhere—and I still couldn’t have her. The pain of the dungeons was nothing compared to this.
I tucked the blankets up under her chin and plaited her hair into a loose braid so it wouldn’t tangle in her sleep. Lydia taught me how to braid a long time ago, on a rainy afternoon when we had nothing to do but be together.
I allowed myself a moment of weakness in Ivy’s doorway, where I stood for much too long watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest.
Then I walked to Lydia’s room.
“You have to tell her,” Lydia says now. “You owe her that much.”
“I don’t see the point. It’ll just hurt her further,” I reply. I don’t know how to make her understand that I’ve becomeofthis place, transformed. I may look well on the outside, but the veneer hides a rotting, foul center, like a piece of faerie fruit.
“So what’s your plan, then?” Lydia asks, voice drenched with sarcasm.
“We’ll do what we need to do with Bram, Ivy will move back to England, and she’ll move on with someone more suitable than me. She was never going to be mine. I’ve known that since the beginning.”
“And you and I?” Lydia asks quietly.
“We’ll do what we’ve always done,” I answer.Survive.
“If you think she’s going to move on, you don’t know my sister as well as you think. She won’t just let this go.”
I shrug. It’s not often we disagree, but Ivy was willing to leave me for Bram even before all of this. Lydia has it all wrong.
“You have to tell her,” Lydia says once more.
“I can’t.”
Lydia whips around to face me, her hands covered in thick oil paint. “She’s in agony!”
“She can join the club!” I hate myself immediately for shouting at Lydia. She’s always been my tether to the better parts of me, and I need her now, even as I long to push her away.
