Ten

Ten

When the king was first interred,

He did not dream at all.

It was the abhorrent nothingness

That cast a dreadful pall.

That bleak and black oblivion

Was too much like death to bear.

And so the dreams came like a balm

For the half-dead king’s despair.

From “The Dreams of a Sleeping King” by Colin Blackmar, 193 AD

The next day, Preston was jumpier than usual, flinching at every unexpected sound. He couldn’t seem to get over the fact that Ianto had waved his rifle at them. But that was the least of Effy’s concerns. Ianto’s more overt antagonism didn’t bother her—a man with a gun was an enemy she could easily recognize and comprehend.

No, she was far more concerned about the things she could only see out of the corner of her eye, the voices she heard when no one else was listening.

Ianto’s threats had been vague, but she knew he didn’t want to see her and Preston together again. So they began working only under the cover of night.

It would have taken days, if not weeks, to read through the whole diary with the careful attention it required. But the entries they had read pointed over and over again to Colin Blackmar. If Preston was to be believed, they didn’t have much time to solve the mystery before the rest of the literature college came pounding at the door—or before Ianto banished him from the house.

“We could only have days,” Preston said. “We have to focus on Blackmar now.”

Effy knew nothing about Blackmar other than her memories of that one terrible poem, which she had a clear vision of reciting while wearing an itchy school sweater.

“He’s about as patriotic a writer as you can imagine,” Preston said. “Openly nationalist. There’s a reason every Llyrian child has to learn ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King.’ And the king is venerated because he slaughtered hundreds of Argantians.”

Preston’s voice tipped up at the end; he always sounded uncharacteristically nervous when he spoke of Argant, and his normally subtle accent became more pronounced.

“I bet the Llyrian government wishes they could put him in the Sleeper Museum too,” Effy said. That was one thing all the Sleepers had in common: they had to be from the South.

“Oh, Blackmar is probably pitying himself that he had the misfortune to have been born north of Laleston. I suppose he could make up some story about how he was an orphan child, taken in by nobility, but with Southern blood running true in his veins. There you go—Sleeper Museum, eternal veneration, magic.”

Preston’s tone dripped with irony, and Effy rolled her eyes. “It must be immensely frustrating for you, to put up with all our Llyrian superstitions. Just because it’s an archaic belief doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Argant has plenty of its own superstitions, let me assure you. But I think magic is just the truth that people believe. For most people, that truth is whatever helps them sleep at night, whatever makes their lives easier. It’s different from objective truth.”

Effy laughed shortly. “No wonder you’re such a terrible liar.”

It did charm her to know that despite all his monologuing about good lies requiring a willing audience, he still flushed and stammered over his falsehoods.

“I don’t like lying.” Preston folded his arms over his chest. “I know it’s not realistic, but the world would be a better place if everyone just told the truth.”

It was a strangely naive thing to say. Effy had never thought much about the lies she told—she didn’t feel good about them, but they didn’t rend her apart with guilt, either. Lying was a form of survival, a way out of whatever trap had been set. Some animals chewed off their own limbs to escape. Effy just tucked away truth after truth, until even she wasn’t sure if there was a real person left at all, under all those desperate, urgent lies.

But it had been a long time since she’d even tried telling anyone the truth. She just assumed no one would believe her. Preston especially, with his pretentiousness and disdain for anything that couldn’t be proven. Yet even though he held to his principles, he wasn’t as close-minded as she’d initially imagined him to be. He truly considered all the things she said, all the new information presented to him—and he’d even told her he was perfectly willing to be proven wrong.

Somehow, Effy found herself blurting out, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Preston blinked at her. “Where did that come from?”

“I?.?.?. I don’t know.” Effy had surprised herself with the words. “I’m just curious. I know you don’t believe in Sleeper magic, but ghosts are different, aren’t they?”

Preston’s expression suddenly became very hard. “There’s no proof that ghosts are real. No scientific evidence to support it.”

“But there’s nothing to prove they aren’t real, is there?”

“I suppose not.”

She expected Preston to say more, but his mouth had snapped shut and he wasn’t meeting her eyes. It was uncharacteristic of him to be so withdrawn. Usually it took very little coaxing to get him to wax poetic on practically any subject.

“And there are so many ghost stories,” Effy pressed. “So many sightings—I bet in a room full of people, half of them would claim they’ve seen a ghost. Every culture has ghost stories. That seems significant.”

“I don’t know what brought this up,” Preston said slowly, “but if you really want to know what I believe—I believe in the human mind’s ability to rationalize and externalize its fear.”

“Fear?” Effy raised a brow. “Not all ghost stories are scary. Some are comforting.”

“Fine, then.” Preston’s voice was tight, his gaze fixed stubbornly on some point above her head. “I believe in the emotions—grief, terror, desire, hope, or otherwise—that might conjure one.”

It was not the dismissive answer Effy thought she might get. He hadn’t laughed at her, like she’d been afraid he would. He hadn’t told her she was childish or stupid. But she could tell from the way he’d spoken, how his whole body had tensed when she’d said the word ghost, that it was something he very much did not want to discuss. It was like she’d gotten too close to picking open a wound.

She found that she didn’t want to hurt him, and so she resolved not to bring up what she had seen. What she had heard. Instead, Effy asked, “Blackmar is alive, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Preston looked relieved that she’d changed the subject. “Ancient, but alive.”

“Then let’s go see him,” she said. “He’s the only one who can answer our questions.”

Preston hesitated. They had both felt it too dangerous to keep the lights on in the study, so they were working by moonlight and candlelight, keeping their voices low. Right then the left side of his face was doused in orange, the right side in white.

“As it happens, I wrote to Blackmar already,” he said at last. “His name crops up quite a lot in Myrddin’s letters as well. I thought he might give me some insight into Myrddin’s character, since Ianto won’t talk about his father at all.”

“Well?” Effy prompted.

“The letter came back marked ‘return to sender,’” Preston said. “But I know he opened it and read it, because the seal was broken and replaced with one of his own.”

“Can I see the letter?”

Somewhat reluctantly, Preston produced it. Effy flattened the paper against the table, squinted in the candlelight, and read.

Dear Mr. Blackmar,

I am a literature student at the university in Caer-Isel, and my thesis concerns some of the works of Emrys Myrddin. I’ve recently become aware that the two of you maintained correspondence, and I hoped I might make a scholarly inquiry into the nature of your relationship, if you are amenable to answering some of my questions. I am happy to make the journey to Penrhos if you find face-to-face conversation preferable to written correspondence.

Sincerely,

Preston Héloury

Effy blinked up at him. “This is the worst letter I’ve ever seen.”

“What do you mean?” Preston looked affronted. “It’s brisk and professional. I didn’t want to waste his time.”

“He has to be in his nineties now, Blackmar. He has plenty of time on his hands. Where’s the flattery? The beseeching? You could’ve at least pretended to be a fan of his work.”

“I told you, I don’t like lying.”

“This is for a good cause. Isn’t it worth lying a little bit, if it helps get to the truth?”

“Interesting paradox. Llyr doesn’t have a patron saint of blessed liars for nothing. Do parents ever name their children after Saint Duessa?”

Effy’s skin prickled. She didn’t want to go down this dark road. “Some, I guess. But stop changing the subject. I’m making fun of your terrible letter.”

Preston let out a breath. “Fine. Why don’t you write one, then?”

“I will,” she said with resolve.

That night, Effy wrote her letter, beseeching and full of flattery. They couldn’t risk putting it in Hiraeth’s postbox, since Ianto could easily check it, so Preston drove down to Saltney to send it.

“There’s nothing to do now except wait,” Preston said. “And I’ll keep looking through the diary.”

Effy found her mind lingering on a different mystery, the one she still didn’t have the courage to tell Preston about. The Fairy King, the ghost, Ianto’s strange conversation. The thoughts haunted her both sleeping and waking, and she found herself fleeing Hiraeth as quickly as she could at night, barreling toward the safety of the guesthouse.

It was almost a relief to not think about Myrddin for a while. She didn’t want to remember the photographs, the diary entry where he’d called women frivolous. A part of her wished she’d never seen any of it at all.

At least distracting Ianto turned out to be easy. For him, Effy drew sketches that would never leave the paper, floor plans that would never be realized. She found that he was a willing audience for her lies. He wanted to believe, as she once had (as maybe a part of her still did) that the project of Hiraeth was more than just an imagined future. A castle in the air.

“I like the look of the second floor here,” Ianto said, as they spread out her drawings over the dining table. “The bay windows overlooking the sea—it will be lovely for watching the sunrise and sunset. My mother will like it, too.”

“Does your mother not want me to be here?” Effy had been holding on to the question practically since she arrived at Hiraeth, but after the odd half conversation she’d overheard, it was killing her more than ever not to ask it.

Now seemed like a good time. Ianto was in a jaunty mood. The sun was wriggling through the clouds. The Fairy King had not appeared to her since that day in the car, and Ianto had never brought up the incident. To him, it seemed, the whole event had never occurred.

Ianto leaned back in his chair and let out a breath. There was a long stretch of silence, and Effy worried that there was not, in fact, a good time to ask the question after all.

“She’s a very private woman,” he said at last. “My father made her that way.”

Effy’s stomach clenched. “What do you mean?”

“He grew up in dire poverty, as you know. He hardly had more than the clothes on his back, and his father’s little fishing boat. When he finally did have something of his own, he was loath to let it go.” Another beat of silence. “This house—he let it decay rather than have any stranger come to fix the leaking pipes or broken windows, much less the crumbling foundation. It’s a good metaphor, I think, but I’m no literary scholar like our other guest.”

He almost never mentioned Preston by name. He called him the student or the Argantian. Ianto’s words reminded Effy of a certain passage from Angharad.

“I will love you to ruination,” the Fairy King said, brushing a strand of golden hair from my cheek.

“Yours or mine?” I asked.

The Fairy King did not answer.

That made her think of the photographs again, and that made her cheeks turn pink. Maybe she didn’t want to know about the ghost, about Myrddin’s widow, about whatever secrets Ianto was hiding. It was all tangled up like catch in a fishing net, nearly dead things thrashing as they choked on air.

Maybe Preston was right about why people believed in magic. The truth was an ugly, dangerous thing.

“Well,” Effy said, “I’ll try my best to stay out of your mother’s way.”

“Oh, I doubt you’ve disturbed her,” Ianto said. His colorless eyes had taken on a bit of that odd gleam she’d seen in the pub, and it startled her so much that she jerked back in her seat. “You’re as demure as a little kitten.”

Effy tried a smile. Fingers trembling, she gripped the hag stones in her pocket.

Only a day after her conversation with Ianto, there was a letter in Hiraeth’s postbox. Effy and Preston had both been staking it out at all hours to intercept the letter before Ianto could see it. It happened to arrive on Effy’s watch, and she seized it, clutched it to her chest, and ran up the stairs to the house. She didn’t care that it was still daylight and Ianto might see her and be furious; she burst into the study, breathing hard, and slapped the envelope down in front of Preston.

He was sitting at Myrddin’s desk, head bowed over the diary. The sunlight streaming through the window illuminated little flecks of gold in his brown hair, and highlighted the pale scattering of freckles across his nose. When he saw the letter, his face broke into a smile that, for some reason, made Effy’s heart give a tiny flutter.

“He really wrote back,” Preston said. “I can’t believe it.”

“You should have more faith in me. I can be very charming, you know.”

Preston gave a huff of laughter. “I actually do know that.”

Effy’s cheeks grew warm. She picked the envelope up again and neatly broke Blackmar’s seal. She pulled the letter out gingerly; it was written on very thin paper, almost translucent in the sunlight. She held it out so that Preston could read it, too.

Miss Euphemia Sayre,

I was pleased to receive such an admiring letter. You seem like a lovely, agreeable young woman. I would be more than happy to host you and your academic compatriot at my manor, Penrhos. You already know the address, as the successful delivery of your letter demonstrates. You seem like quite a special young girl indeed, to be so interested in the work of two old men, one now six months dead. I will certainly entertain you for as long as it takes to satisfactorily answer your questions about my work and the work of Emrys Myrddin. He was a dear friend and even, in the end, family.

All my best,

Colin Blackmar

“I just went on about how much I loved ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King,’” Effy said, so pleased by the outcome of her letter-writing efforts that she was beaming and blabbering, words coming out fast and eager. “I barely mentioned Myrddin at all—I didn’t want to offend him by even suggesting I might be more interested in Myrddin’s work than his own. I told you all it would take was some flattery.”

Effy looked at Preston expectantly, but he had gone silent, his brow furrowed as he stared at the letter. “I didn’t know that was your full name.”

In all her excitement, she’d forgotten that she had signed her letter to Blackmar as Euphemia. She’d done it intentionally. No one, not even her mother, not even her stiff and formal grandparents, called her Euphemia. But Effy had a childish, frivolous quality to it. She didn’t want Blackmar to think of her as frivolous. She wanted him to take her inquiries seriously. So she had used her real name.

Now she could see Preston’s mind turning, and her stomach shriveled. “Yes,” she said. “That’s my full name.”

“Do you mind if I ask—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unspeakably rude—” She had never heard him stammer like this. His face was flushed all the way to the tips of his ears. “You don’t have to answer, of course, and honestly, please feel free to hit me or call me a twat for asking at all, but—were you a changeling child?”

Effy let the room sink into silence. She had gone by her nickname for so long, she had almost forgotten the significance of her real one: that a saint’s name was the mark of a changeling.

She closed her left hand into a fist and opened it again. It really was an unspeakably rude question. No one asked. She was a good Northern girl from a good Northern family, and changeling children were a barbaric custom, practiced only by peasants in the Bottom Hundred.

“Yes,” she said finally, and she was surprised by how easy it was, to say that single word.

“I’m really sorry. It’s just that you mentioned being fatherless—” Preston ran a hand through his hair, looking positively miserable.

“It’s all right,” she said. That was easy to say, too. In fact, Effy realized, she could tell the whole story as if it had happened to someone else, and it would be completely painless. “My mother was my age, or somewhere near it, when she had me. My father was a man who worked at my grandfather’s bank—older. There was no wedding or proper courtship. It was an embarrassment to my grandfather that she ended up pregnant. He fired my father, banished him back to the South. He was from the Bottom Hundred—one of those upstart provincial geniuses.”

“I’m sorry,” Preston repeated desperately. “You don’t have to say any more.”

“I don’t mind.” Effy was elsewhere now, floating. Her mind had opened its escape hatch and she was gone. “My mother had me, but a child was such an inconvenience to everyone. To her and my grandparents. I was a terrible child, too. I threw tantrums and broke things. Even as an infant I wouldn’t nurse. I screamed when anyone touched me.”

And then she stopped. The escape hatch snapped shut. She hit that wall, the boundary between the real and the unreal. In her mind there was an even divide, a before and an after. Once she had been an ordinary, if imprudent, little girl. And then, in the span of a moment, she became something else.

Or maybe she had always been wrong. A wicked fae creature from the unreal world, stranded unfairly in the real one.

“There’s a river that runs through Draefen,” Effy said after a moment. “That’s where my mother left me. I remember it was the middle of winter. All the trees were bare. I know she thought some sad and childless woman would come pick me up. She didn’t mean to expose me, to let me die—”

Preston’s expression was unreadable, but he had not taken his eyes off her face. She really should have taken the out he had tried to give her and stopped talking. Preston was the biggest skeptic she’d ever met. He didn’t believe in magic; he didn’t even believe in Myrddin. Why would he believe her, when no one else had?

But he had listened to her, when she had asked him about ghosts. He had not dismissed her, laughed at her, though clearly the discussion had made him uncomfortable. And then she thought of the way he had dropped to the floor in front of her and cleaned her skinned knees and hardly even questioned why she had thrown herself from Ianto’s car.

Effy opened her mouth again, and words poured out.

“No childless woman came for me,” she whispered. “But he did.”

Behind his glasses, Preston’s eyes narrowed. “Who did?”

“The Fairy King,” she said.

The old, barbaric custom was this: In the South, it was believed that some children were simply born wrong, or were poisoned by the fairies in their cradles. These changeling children were awful and cruel. They bit their mothers when they tried to nurse them. They were always given the names of saints, to try to drive the evil away. Effy always wondered whether her mother had picked her name, Euphemia, to be a blessing or a curse. The feminine variation of Eupheme, patron saint of storytellers. Most of the time it just felt like a cruel joke.

But if that did not work, it was the mother’s right to abandon her child: to leave them out for the fairies to take back.

Preston would probably say that was just the pretty truth the Southerners told themselves to sleep easily at night—that they weren’t leaving their children out to die, that a fairy would come to spirit them back to their true home, in the realm of fae. But Effy had seen him. Thirteen years later, and still the image was bright and clear in her mind. His beautiful face and his wet black hair. His hand, reaching out for hers.

Even thinking of it now, her chest tightened with panic. Before the true terror could take hold and plunge her under, Preston’s voice shattered the memory.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “The Fairy King is a story.”

She had heard it so many times that the words didn’t sting anymore. Ordinarily she would have stopped talking right then and there, apologized, told him she was only joking.

But the words kept pouring out.

“He was there with me,” Effy said. “He stepped right out of the river. He was still all glistening and wet. It was dark, but he stood in a puddle of moonlight. He told me he was going to take me, and he was terrifying, but when he held out his hand, I took it.”

That was the hardest part to speak aloud. The ugliest confession, the black rotted truth at the very core of her. She had reached back. Any ordinary child would have shrunk away in fear, would have wept, would have screamed. But Effy had not made a sound. She had been ready to let him take her.

“But my mother returned,” she said. Her voice was thick. “She snatched me up from the riverbank and pulled my hand right out of the Fairy King’s grasp. I saw the look of fury on his face before he vanished. He hates nothing more than to be refused. My mother held me, but where I had touched him, my finger was rotted away. He took it with him, and said he would be back for the rest.”

She held up her left hand, with its missing fourth digit. She didn’t add the last of what the Fairy King had said: That he had taken her ring finger so that no other man could put a wedding band on it. So that she would always belong to him.

“You said it was winter.” Preston’s voice was gentle. “Your finger could’ve fallen off from frostbite.”

That was what the doctor had said, of course. He had bandaged it and given her a brown syrupy medicine to stave off infection, just like, years later, he had given her the pink pills to stave off her visions.

It wasn’t until years later, when Effy first read Angharad, that she had learned what really kept the Fairy King at bay. Iron. Mountain ash. Rowan berries. She had broken off a bough of mountain ash in the park in Draefen and kept it under her pillow. She had stolen her grandfather’s iron candelabra and slept with it in her hand. She had even tried to eat rowan berries, but they tasted so bitter, she spit them out, gagging.

“I know you don’t believe me,” she said. “No one ever has.”

Preston was silent. She could almost see his mind working, the thoughts scrolling behind his eyes. At last, he said, “I suppose that’s why you’re such a big fan of Myrddin’s work.”

“I didn’t read Angharad until I was thirteen,” Effy said, cheeks growing hot. “If that’s what you mean. It wasn’t a child’s imagination—I didn’t have some image of the Fairy King in my mind.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I just meant?.?.?. it must have been easier to believe that there was some magic at work—a childhood curse, the pernicious Fair Folk. Something other than ordinary human cruelty.”

He didn’t believe her. Maybe that was for the best. Her stomach was churning now. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“Effy,” Preston said softly. “I’m sorry. You didn’t have to tell me.”

“My mother did come back for me, in the end,” she said in a rush. “And she felt so enormously guilty for leaving me. She even gave me a good saint’s name. I feel sorry for the other changeling children, named after Belphoebe or Artegall.”

“That isn’t right, Effy.” Preston’s voice was low but firm, and he met her gaze unrelentingly. “Mothers aren’t supposed to hate their children.”

“What makes you think she hated me?” Now she did feel angry, not because he hadn’t believed her, but because he had no right to judge her mother—a woman he’d never even met. “Like I said, I was a terrible child. Any mother would’ve been tempted to do the same.”

“No,” Preston said. “They wouldn’t.”

“Why do you always have to be so certain you’re right?” Effy tried to imbue her words with venom, but she just sounded desperate, scrambling. “You don’t know my mother, and you hardly know me.”

“I know you well enough. You aren’t terrible. You’re nothing close. And even if you were a difficult child—whatever that means—there’s no justification for your mother wanting you dead. How did your mother expect you to live with that, Effy? To go on as normal knowing that she once tried to leave you out in the cold?”

She swallowed. Her ears were ringing; for a moment, she thought it was the bells from below the sea, the bells of those drowned churches. If she had had one of her pink pills with her, she would have taken it.

Her mother had gotten her those pills for a reason, so Effy could live with it, so she could go on as normal knowing that she’d once been left for dead. Her mother had pulled Effy right from the Fairy King’s grasp, leaving just a finger behind. That was love, wasn’t it?

“You said you believe in ghosts,” she said thickly. “What’s so different about this?”

“I said I believed in the horror or desire that might conjure one,” Preston said. His eyes shifted, a muscle pulsed in his throat. “I can’t tell you I believe in the Fairy King, Effy. But I believe in your grief and your fear. Isn’t that enough?”

She hadn’t even told him the worst thing of all: that the Fairy King had never truly left her. If she told Preston she had seen the Fairy King in the car with Ianto, he would realize he had made a terrible mistake in trusting her to help him. He would never believe another word she said.

Her eyes pricked with tears, and she swallowed hard to keep them from falling. “No,” she said. “It’s not enough. You are being rude. You’re being mean. It’s not—no one believed Angharad, either. And because no one believed her, the Fairy King was free to take her.”

Preston inhaled. For a moment she thought he might argue, but there was no petulance on his face, no vitriol. He looked almost grief-stricken himself.

“I’m sorry for being rude,” he said at last. “I wasn’t trying to be. I’m only trying to tell you?.?.?. well, I was trying to say you deserve better.”

With a sudden shock like a rush of cold seawater, Effy found herself thinking of Master Corbenic.

“You deserve a man, Effy,” Master Corbenic had told her once. “Not one of these awkward, acne-spotted boys. I see the way they look at you—with their leering, mopey eyes. Even if it isn’t me you want, in the end, I know that you’ll find yourself in the arms of a man, a real man. You’d exhaust these spineless boys. You need someone to challenge you. Someone to rein you in. Someone to keep you safe, protect you from your worst impulses and from the world. You’ll see.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, forcing the memory to dissipate. She didn’t want to think of him. She would rather think of the Fairy King in the corner of her room.

But when she opened her eyes, there was no Master Corbenic. No Fairy King. There was only Preston standing before her, his gaze taking her in carefully, tenderly, as if he was worried that even his stare might chafe.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she bit out.

“All right,” he said gently. But his eyes never left her.

She did not linger at Hiraeth that night. She did not want to speak to Preston, and she certainly didn’t want to speak to Ianto. Instead, when the sun humbled herself to the encroaching darkness, Effy retreated toward the guesthouse.

The air was cruelly cold and the grass wet from an earlier sprinkling of rain. Effy buttoned her coat all the way up to her throat and wrapped her scarf around her neck three times, hiding her mouth and nose behind the wool fabric. Then she slid down against the door to the guesthouse until she was seated in the grass, knees pulled up against her chest.

Her sleeping pills and her pink pills lay untouched on the bedside table inside. It grew darker and darker. Over and over again Preston’s words thrummed in her mind: I believe in your grief and your fear. Isn’t that enough?

No. It wasn’t enough. As long as that was the only thing he believed, she would always be just a scared little girl making up stories in her head. She would be infirm, unstable, untrustworthy, undeserving of the life she wanted. They put girls like her in attic rooms or sanatoriums, locked them up and threw away the keys.

Effy waited until it was black as pitch and she couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face. Then she lit a candle she’d brought from the house and held it out into the dense darkness.

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.

She repeated the line over and over again in her mind, and then she spoke it out loud, into the black night and its uncanny silence.

“I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.”

She was not afraid. She needed him to come.

And then, behind the tree line, a flash of white. Wet black hair. Even a sliver of face, pale as moonlight.

All her fear came piling down again, and Effy’s mind thrashed like something caught in the foaming surf. She staggered to her feet, dropping the candle. The wet grass instantly snuffed it out, and she was plunged into darkness.

She felt for the handle of the door, wrenched it open, and hurled herself through. She slammed it shut behind her, the iron brace scraping against stone.

Her heart was pounding against her sternum like a trapped bird. Effy’s knees shook so terribly that she fell forward again, and had to crawl across the cold floor until she reached the bed. Her fingers were trembling too much to light another candle. She just heaved herself into bed and pulled the green duvet over her head.

He had come for her, just like he had promised all those years ago. She had seen him. He was real. She was not mad.

As long as the Fairy King was real, he could be killed, just as Angharad had vanquished him.

If he was not real, there would never be any escape from him.

Effy crammed two sleeping pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry. But even the pills could no longer stop her from dreaming of him.