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“Surely, you knew that we would be going into Faerie,” he said.

Clarimonde drew a steadying breath. “The thought had occurred to me,” she admitted.

The truth, of course, was that knowing Faerie was ahead and actually seeing it were two very different things. Unlike her sister Winnie, Clarimonde had never been to Faerie before—nor, in fact, had she ever desired to visit it. England, she thought, was difficult enough to navigate, and it had at least a semblance of understandable rules. The world of Faerie did not like rules, for all that it supposedly cleaved to them with exacting certainty; such inherent contradictions were woven into the air and the trees and the creatures who lived there.

People like Clarimonde did not thrive in Faerie. She wanted too much for honesty, for stability, for comforting silence and minor creature comforts. After the noisy chaos and disordered surroundings of the workhouses in which she’d grown up, Clarimonde had been unutterably relieved to discover that life could be pleasant and predictable, once she got her hands around it and forced it to heel.

Winnie—shifty, clever, adaptable Winnie—had been all but made for Faerie. But now, staring through an open doorway into a rotting forest out of time, Clarimonde knew more certainly than ever before that she could not dance through that other world as Winnie did. It would shift beneath her feet with every step… and surely, if she spent too long there, it would finally destroy her.

“Are you afraid, Miss Betony?” Lord Foxglove asked softly. There was no judgement in his voice, Clarimonde thought… but of course, that meant very little. Lord Foxglove was entirely too adept at hiding his true opinion, especially when he thought that it might alarm his current company. He would have smiled as he threw her from his carriage, had Bellamira not intervened with a solution.

“I don’t know if I am afraid,” Clarimonde replied honestly. Her eyes slid away from the open doorway, falling to the leaves beneath her boots. “I don’t… think that this is fear. Perhaps foreboding. Perhaps a bit of distaste. I know that I do not belong in Faerie. It will be unkind to me, I am certain. I think that makes me… tired, rather than afraid.”

That is how I feel about you, too, Clarimonde realised belatedly. I am already tired of waiting for your betrayal, however pleasant you have made yourself in the meantime.

Perhaps, she thought wearily, she would soon be rid of the faerie lord entirely. After all, he had promised to bring her back to Witchwood Manor—and here they were, at Witchwood Manor. Surely, he had no desire to remain in her company any longer than he’d been bound to do.

“Faerie can be terribly cruel,” Lord Foxglove agreed. “Even to us. It wants what it wants, and it shall not be dissuaded. In fact, it is a tyrant. But every world is like that, I think, once you strip away the cities and the trains and the carriages. When the storm rages, even the most powerful must cower before it and feel their helplessness.”

Clarimonde turned her head to look at him more fully. No matter how smooth Lord Foxglove kept his voice, she had found, there was often a subtle hint of emotion in his icy blue eyes. Now, she thought she detected a flicker of bitter longing in the cold depths of his gaze.

“Generally speaking,” she informed him, “that is why I live in the city. I have no desire to meet with nature directly—nor with Faerie, for that matter. I am already well enough aware of my own helplessness. I cannot see that I would enjoy any further reminders of it.”

Clarimonde returned her attention to the open doorway, still fluttering with dying leaves. She sighed, and squared her shoulders. “All of that aside, however… I do not intend to stand on this doorstep forever. That would be terribly silly.”

“And you are never silly, of course,” Lord Foxglove replied. There was a sly smile in his voice as he spoke the words.

“Rarely on purpose,” Clarimonde agreed. She hefted her valise into her arms, and stepped across the threshold.

Perhaps it was only her imagination—but she was certain that she felt the moment of transition, as solid reality gave way to something far more alien. Cold moonlight filtered through gnarled black trees, though she couldn’t identify a moon within the sky; instead, distant stars roiled there, winding through nonsensical constellations that just as soon abandoned their structure in order to create new patterns entirely. The forest floor was piled so high with rotting leaves that Clarimonde wouldn’t have been able to make out a path at all, had it not been for the trees that had grown into suggestive archways. In fact, she had the feeling that those archways had appeared precisely for her benefit, though she had no way of proving the idea.

She felt Lord Foxglove walking behind her, though she did not hear him; the leaves that crunched beneath her boots and snagged upon her skirts offered him no trouble at all by comparison. As Clarimonde followed the path laid before her, she had the foreboding sense that she had descended into the underworld—and she remembered, too, that the spirit behind her was no longer obliged to protect her, now that she had arrived at their ultimate destination.

Eyes were watching, she was certain. She had the feeling of them, keen and unrelenting on her skin. As Clarimonde reached the end of her claustrophobic procession, she discovered the watchers, now in plain view.

A crowd of faeries had gathered in the grand clearing beyond. Though Clarimonde had only met a handful of faeries in her time, she had learned much of them in theory—and so, she was able to identify several of the twisted, bark-skinned creatures as dryads, and a few of the goat-legged watchers as satyrs. There were others mixed in among them that she did not know and could not fully focus herself upon: for beyond them was a great oak throne, with a shadowy figure sat upon it.

The faerie upon the throne was pale and gaunt, beneath the shadows that clung to his limbs. His cheekbones were knife-like, such that he appeared half-starved—though the crown of woven branches atop his black hair immediately dispelled the notion that he could want for anything. His red eyes glinted down at her with cold and terrible amusement—as though Clarimonde was a child who had wandered into danger that she did not fully comprehend.

And have I done that? Clarimonde wondered suddenly. Her stomach clenched with worry. Winnie had called her here, and she had trusted her older sister’s judgement… but then, where was Winnie? For the first time, Clarimonde realised that something terrible might have happened to her sister in the time between her invitation and Clarimonde’s arrival.

“Goodness me,” drawled the figure on the throne. “I leave the door open only for a moment, and some hapless mortal inevitably wanders in. What have you brought me, Foxglove?”

Clarimonde glanced sharply over her shoulder. Lord Foxglove had stepped in very close behind her. His pale form was stark against the heavy, cloying shadows that surrounded them; the eerie contrast made him seem even more otherworldly and less relatable than he had been before. For some reason, though, his hand touched subtly between her shoulder blades, as though to reassure her… or else, perhaps, to warn her.

“I bring you a petitioner, Dread Lord,” the faerie said, with an inclination of his head. “If you are gracious enough to grant the lady a private audience, I believe that you will find it worth your time.”

Whispers rose among the gathered faeries, like wind through rasping leaves. Clarimonde’s body stiffened beneath the weight of that gathered attention, though she forced herself to remain stoic and expressionless.

What perfumes do I have? she asked herself. Nothing powerful enough to withstand an entire host of faeries and their lord. But perhaps I could escape, if I was quick about it.

But then—where was Winnie? If Clarimonde left now, then she might never know what had become of her other sister. After Bellamira’s abrupt loss, the idea was so utterly abhorrent that she could not bring herself to contemplate it. No; she would remain just long enough to learn something of Winnie’s fate. And if she did not like the answer, she decided, then every faerie present would regret it before they brought her low.

“How impertinent,” said the faerie on the throne. “Well, I do concede: After years of tiresome, unchanging company, new faces are still novel. I will entertain this private audience and see if it amuses me.”

The lord rose slowly from his throne, casting the long, skeletal shadow of his crown behind him like a cloak. Faeries inched back from him with sudden fear—and even Foxglove tensed his hand at Clarimonde’s back.

“Leave,” the lord commanded softly. The word echoed across the clearing with sinister weight, leaning upon the gathered faeries with terrible warning.