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Winnie narrowed her eyes further. “Many years ago, in Hollowvale, you offered me the illusion of your friendship,” she told the faerie coldly. “And yet… when I most required that friendship, you stayed silent. You were here all along, watching as I suffered through a hundred different trials. You could have given me information. You could have helped me through the Witchwood Knot. Instead, you looked away as your hostess tried to turn me into a bloody tree.”

Lord Foxglove shrugged. “I was fond of you, Miss Winifred,” he said. “But I am fonder of myself. Had I believed you capable of prevailing with my help, I might have offered it. But I thought you doomed, regardless—and I had no desire to risk upsetting the least humorous lady in all of Faerie while eating at her table.” He offered her what might have seemed a charming smile, under other circumstances. “You did prevail, of course. And I am forced to admit that I was foolish ever to underestimate you.”

It was a smooth attempt at flattery, Clarimonde noted—but even Lord Foxglove knew that it would gain him nothing. He was entirely unsurprised when Winnie’s chill expression failed to thaw.

“You have admitted, in your sideways manner, that we have no warm relationship of which to speak,” Winnie told him flatly. “As such, I invoke the letter of our agreement, once again. I do not see Bellamira here. Therefore, your debt remains outstanding.”

Lord Foxglove offered her an ironic smile. “So it would seem,” he agreed.

The entire exchange left Clarimonde feeling horribly exhausted. “Would both of you please stop?” she asked bitterly. “What gain is there in this? You do not trust each other, that is clear. Then go your separate ways! Mr Fox cares nothing for any of us, so let us not rely upon him. And it is my fault Bellamira is not here, Winnie. So free him of his debt and let him leave.”

The admission made her feel so wretched and hollow that she suddenly recognised how true it was. Her hand strayed to the watch in her pocket, clinging to it miserably.

Winnie glanced at Clarimonde sharply. “Your fault?” she asked. A note of scepticism crept into her tone. “How is it your fault, Clarimonde?”

Clarimonde forced herself to maintain a neutral demeanour, once again. Lord Foxglove had silently honed his attention upon her at her interruption, studying her with new consideration, and she still loathed the idea of weeping in front of him.

“The Hound took some of my hair, in order to track me,” Clarimonde said, with only the slightest waver in her voice. “Bellamira did a spell and led him away, pretending to be me. She said… her time was coming soon, regardless.” Tears pricked at her eyes, despite her best efforts. “I should have stopped her.”

Winnie’s coldness melted into distressed confusion. She reached out to pull Clarimonde back into her arms, stroking gently at her hair. “Hush,” she said softly, though Clarimonde had yet to cry in earnest. “Oh, Clarimonde… no. We both know that you could never have stopped her. I couldn’t have stopped her either, in your place.”

“But it’s still my fault,” Clarimonde whispered hoarsely. “If I hadn’t let the Hound take my hair⁠—”

“Oh, did you let him?” Lord Foxglove interrupted mildly, from his place at the foot of the throne. “I was under the impression he had torn it from your head by force.”

Winnie shot the faerie a dark look over Clarimonde’s shoulder. “All of this can still be resolved,” she challenged him. “We can take your hearse and track down Bellamira. If you help me rescue her, your debt will be entirely repaid.”

Lord Foxglove blinked. “My hearse is gone,” he informed Winnie. “Your sister took it with her.”

Winnie’s face clouded over with perplexion. “But I saw your carriage here, in front of Witchwood Manor,” she told him. “It is why I came back. It is very difficult to mistake for anyone else’s carriage.”

The briefest flicker of hope crawled its way up Clarimonde’s throat, before the awful truth came hurtling in to brutally extinguish it. “Bellamira promised she would send the hearse back to Witchwood Manor, once she was caught,” she whispered. “If it has returned already… then the Hound must have had her hours ago.”

CHAPTER 5

“Magic cannot solve everything. In fact, it’s often terribly useless.”

LORD ELIAS WILDER TO MISS CLARIMONDE BETONY, AGE 10

Winnie soon took charge of things, as she was wont to do. Though Clarimonde might normally have fought her older sister for control, she found herself folding to her leadership this time, as Winnie whispered urgent things to Mr Quincy and directed Lord Foxglove to bring Clarimonde back to the true Witchwood Manor.

Lord Foxglove, for his part, did not protest being ordered about. Instead, he offered his arm to Clarimonde and led her back through the twisted faerie wood until they’d reached a hollow, rotting tree—quite large enough for both of them to enter it side-by-side.

Clarimonde entered the darkness within that tree, letting it swallow her up entirely. For a moment, she wondered whether she could simply stay there, endlessly suspended between worlds. It would have been a kind of mercy, given the awful thoughts that now swirled about in her mind.

The last image she had of Bellamira kept returning to her, unbidden. Bellamira’s careless smile and ridiculous widow’s weeds felt so ironically alive. But the Hound had caught her—and perhaps she was no longer so vivacious. Clarimonde’s imagination worked without her permission, suggesting what Bellamira might look like if she had passed away. She would be paler, certainly, without her good-natured smile. But would her eyes be closed, as though she were sleeping, or would she stare up at the sky⁠—

“You are thinking far too much again,” Lord Foxglove observed.

Clarimonde blinked quickly. The darkness had mostly retreated; the alien, otherworldly feeling was gone. Her feet now stood upon oak floorboards. A dim, musty hallway stretched to either side of her, punctured by thick wooden doors with wrought iron handles.

“I am sure that I spend far more time thinking than you would otherwise prefer,” Clarimonde murmured to the faerie. The words came out more obviously hostile than she had intended them to do—but she could not bring herself to care.

Nevertheless, Lord Foxglove let the words slide past him like water off of oiled feathers. He patted her arm once, before leading her further down the hallway. “Why, it’s just that all of this thinking never seems to make you any happier,” he told her in a soothing tone. “At times like this, I would imagine that less thinking might be kinder.”

Clarimonde closed her eyes. In some respects, she admitted, the faerie might have been correct. But suddenly, she found that she loathed the disingenuous warmth in his voice. “You do not really care how I am feeling right now,” she told him flatly. “I understand that it is your habit to pretend—but we are parting ways. There is no point to playing nicely with me.”

Lord Foxglove paused. As Clarimonde opened her eyes again, she realised that they were standing in front of one of the doors in the hallway. Its wrought iron handle was beyond the faerie; it would have burned his hand, had he tried to open the door for her. Iron was not kind to human magicians either—it would make her faintly nauseous—but the burns that it might leave upon a faerie would never heal at all.