Rather than the expected click-click-click of Hull’s hooves trotting up the stairs, however, the subsequent sounds to reach his ears were a series of unsteady arrhythmic thuds lurching in ascent.Perhaps a client, then—though not any whose footsteps Ephraim recognised, unless they’d developed a very bad limp since he’d seen them last.His clerk being out, he arose to get the door himself before his unknown visitor need knock.
What he beheld when he opened the door left him aghast.
Hull was climbing the stair—just as Ephraim had first supposed, but not in the manner Ephraim had assumed.He had one hand braced against the stairwell wall and the other slung across the shoulders of a young lad.
“Good afternoon,” Ephraim heard himself say, belatedly and stupidly in equal measure.
Hull met his gaze with a wan smile.“I promised him a shilling to help me home.”
Ephraim’s pulse fluttered uncomfortably high in his throat.He couldn’t perceive what had happened to make Hull require assistance, but then again, Hull wore his mortal glamour.There was no telling what might lie beneath the surface.The thought had never unsettled him before.Now, however…
Nonetheless, he withdrew to hold the door open so Hull and his unlikely companion might enter the office.The moment they crossed the threshold, Ephraim abandoned his post at the door to take Hull’s free arm and thereby guide him towards his chair.Hull sat down with a bitten-back groan.
Ephraim turned to the lad.“Go to Dr Hitchingham’s?—”
“No,” said Hull.
The singular word escaped his gritted teeth sharp and strident.Ephraim had never heard him speak so in all their acquaintance.He knew better than to argue.
“Very well,” Ephraim said to the boy.“You may go on your way then.We cannot thank you enough for the services you’ve rendered, but perhaps this—” Here he proffered the shilling he’d fumbled from his waistcoat pocket as he’d spoke, “may go some way towards expressing it.”
The boy’s eyes went quite round.He snatched the coin from Ephraim’s fingers and bolted out the door, presumably in an effort to get away with it before the queer old man changed his mind.
Ephraim shut the door after him.
“Bolt it,” Hull said in that same strange and strained tone.
Ephraim looked up sharp.
“Please,” Hull added, the word breaking halfway through.
Ephraim hadn’t at all meant to chide him for his tone—the sound of it had merely startled him.He hastened to do as Hull bid.
No sooner had the bolt thudded into place than a shuddering groan escaped Hull’s throat.Ephraim turned to find his form fading.The glamoured appearance of an ordinary—though extraordinarily handsome—mortal clerk gave way to the familiar and still more beautiful, dappled slate-blue figure of Ephraim’s fae lover.
And only then did Ephraim realise the true extent of his agonies.
Over the course of the last few months he’d grown accustomed to the anatomy of Hull’s legs.Rather like those of a goat, though more elegantly elongated, with a slender and delicate foot between heel and hoof.
This had snapped in half.
It appeared at first like an extra joint between ankle and knuckle.Ephraim realised his error almost as quickly as he made it.The flesh surrounding the break had swollen.Still it could not entirely disguise the acute angle at which Hull’s hoof now dangled off the break.The bone had not broken the skin, thank Jove, though this felt but small comfort to Ephraim.Particularly when the snapped end of it pushed out far enough to discolour the surrounding flesh as the pressure forced blood to withdraw from the skin.
“Forgive me,” Hull gasped.“I don’t think I could have kept it up much longer.”
He meant the glamour, Ephraim realised belatedly.Ephraim had no idea how Hull had held out so long as he had.The slate-blue of his complexion had drained to an ashen grey, and his doubled canines grit tight beneath his beard.Even so, when any man would have every right to grow a touch snappish at stupid questions or slow service, there remained a kindness in his dark eyes, white-rimmed as they were with pain.
“I don’t mean anything against Dr Hitchingham,” Hull went on.“It’s only—I don’t know if he ought to see me as I am.And I doubt he’s had much experience with fae anatomy.Certainly not so much as you,” he added, the ghost of his good humour twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, of course,” Ephraim quite agreed.He genuinely had no idea what Dr Hitchingham would make of horns, hooves, and tail.To say nothing of a hollow back.“But you must have some sort of doctor.Or a surgeon?”
Hull’s breath came and left him in hisses.“A bone-setter.”
Rather archaic, Ephraim thought uneasily, but he supposed the problem at hand was after all a bone which needed to be set.“What is his name?And where does he practise?”
A huff of laughter burst from Hull’s lips even amidst his pained gasps.“She’s called Grytha.You won’t find her in London.Here—a pen, please?—”
Ephraim snatched one up and gave it over to Hull’s grasping fingertips.He brought forth the ink-bottle and paper besides.
