25

25

E ven as the train rolled into Victoria Station, it was obvious that something was wrong. The sky was leaden—not the usual cloud cover of an English summer, but the low haze that heralded a nearby bonfire or city pollution. The crowds on the platform were distracted, subdued.

"Perhaps she has broken the London lock already," Eddie said to me quietly. We'd both been thinking it, the anxious, too-slow journey back.

The tension in the air didn't quite feel that way, though. I knew the stunned, barely comprehending quiet that followed a disaster, all too well. This was different—the vague dread of something still to come.

"Clover!" I recognised my brother's voice a moment before I turned to see him wave at us from the station entrance. My brief flicker of relief was immediately subsumed in worry. I hadn't wanted Matthew in London at all, much less meeting us.

"Hero broke the Paris lock," I told him in a rush, as soon as we were in earshot of each other.

"I know." It had been a long time since I'd seen Matthew away from Pendle Hill—perhaps not since before the war, when he'd drive us younger ones into Manchester for the day and treat us to lunch and the Sherlock Holmes serials at the pictures. He looked different set against the city: crisper, brighter despite the tension in his face, alive in some way I hadn't realised I'd missed. A still-young man who'd been around the world, and not a weather-beaten extension of the farm. "Lady Winter called me at the hotel. I'd already read about it in the papers. A bombing, they called it, though I was pretty sure your papers would call it something different. Until she called, though, I had no idea if you'd even made it out of England, much less France. Hello, Eddie. Good to see you again."

"It's good to see you too," Eddie said with a smile.

He meant it. He'd got on well with all my siblings, the week or so he'd spent with us. He saw no trouble at all with Matthew being here, in the midst of a magical conflict, and I knew I was being foolishly overprotective to mind it myself. Still, I did mind.

"We're not too late, are we?" I asked.

"Not as far as I know." He glanced about the crowds, understanding the reason for my question without words. "The whole city's on edge, though. They're saying in the papers that the people who bombed Paris might target London, and they're urging people to go into the city as little as possible. I think your lot are expecting Hero at any minute. And before you tell me I shouldn't be here—I'm guessing you need to talk to Sam more than ever?"

"Did you speak to him?" Eddie asked.

"Not as such," Matthew admitted, and my spirits did a quick plunge again. "I tracked him down, but he's still avoiding all my messages and calls. Don't worry, though, Lady Winter got to him. He's finally agreed to meet her at two this afternoon. Not in his house or his office. Somewhere discreet. He insisted on that."

I tried to rally. It wasn't too late, not yet. "I thought Lady Winter was at Pendle Hill."

"Really?" he said, with the exaggerated surprise of someone whose companion is being very dense. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to meet him in her stead, then."

I shoved him. "Where?"

"Somewhere called the Illusion. Do you know it?"

It came back in a painful rush—Hero's hand at my arm, leading me downstairs; the pulse and throb and glitter of the club floor; Alden's hand at my waist, firm and sure; Eddie looking up at me from the cold stairs, the dazzle of stars overhead. I had to swallow hard before I spoke.

"Yes," I said. "I know it. Two, did you say?"

"It doesn't leave long to get there, I know." Matthew glanced up at the station clock. "I have a room in Soho, if you both want to clean yourselves up a bit. Lady Winter paid for it, before you ask, so it's nicer than you're probably imagining."

"No time." I tried not to imagine the possibilities of a room—a chance to wash, to change clothes, to be anchored for an hour or so. Since I had left Alden's, I hadn't stayed in one spot for longer than a single night, and the last few days had been a nightmare of trains, ferries, broomsticks, more trains. Never mind. It wasn't as though I had anything to change into anyway. "Hero will be ahead of us. We need to go now."

The air had the hushed, breathless quality of the heat before a storm.

I hadn't been in the Illusion since my eighteenth birthday. It wasn't the sort of place I'd ever go on my own, and the few classmates I'd been close to over the years would never have gone either. I'd heard it had only grown wilder and more glittering as the twenties had unfolded—tales of extravagances and excesses crept into the Practitioner , all with a faintly scandalised air that made it more attractive than ever. I could see traces of those adventures now: the sticky floor, the scratches on the walls, the sparkles still clinging to the ceiling.

Now it was a dull Thursday afternoon, and the place was still waking up. The lighting was grey, the sun not bright enough to filter through the high windows and yet too bright for the glowing lamps at each table to alleviate the gloom. The band was setting up in the corner, still tuning their instruments, and the bartender was levitating chairs into place. We had left Eddie outside, in the same alley where we had sat together all those years ago, watching the street for any sign of Guards. I sat at one of the corner tables, nursing a drink, trying to look inconspicuous when my clothes were stained and slept-in, my hair was a mess, and my photograph had once again appeared in the morning paper. I had found a copy of it lying on the table and checked.

"Could be worse," Matthew said. He was looking at the paper upside down, from across the table. "At least you got pushed to page three this time."

"Such a relief," I said, as dryly as I could. "Hero attacking Paris took up page one."

"There really is a bright side to everything." He shifted in his seat. I saw the familiar flicker across his face, the twitch caught before it could become a wince. I hadn't seen it in a long time, but I remembered.

"Is your shoulder hurting?"

"It's fine," he said, too defensive, on reflex. He caught my eye and relented. "A bit. Just this last day or so. It's a bad sign, isn't it?"

"I think she's already in London." I couldn't imagine she hadn't beaten us there, under the circumstances. "I think she's waiting, and she could strike at any moment of her choosing. Does that seem right?"

He nodded reluctantly. "It hasn't felt like this in a long time. Years. And… I had very strange dreams last night."

"What was strange about them?"

"I don't think they were mine."

He was right: That was a very bad sign. At any moment, as we stood here, a siren could blare or an explosion could rock the streets, and the London lock could be shattered like its counterparts in Berlin and Paris. The Illusion was built as a bunker in case of air raids, Hero had told me once. Perhaps it was the safest place to be, if what we wanted was to be safe. But if we wanted to stop Hero—to save her—then we were hanging a great deal on a gamble that might not pay off. Perhaps it was best for Eddie and me to seek out the lock for ourselves, try to protect it, or since the Board were already doing that, go straight to Camford and hope to find a way in. And Matthew should be back home, getting our family to safety, being safe himself. I didn't know what I had been thinking.

I was on the brink of running for the door when Matthew nudged me with a sharp elbow. I looked up, and thank God, there he was.

Sam Truelove Wells was making his way downstairs, his three-piece suit and tie uncharacteristically wilted, his fair hair gleaming in the smoky lights. He was alone, and seemed intent on staying so, though he gave the bartender a familiar nod as he stopped at the counter. He took his glass in one hand and sat down at a small table on the other side of the room, far from the band and the other customers.

"Right on time," Matthew said quietly. Now, of all times, he looked ill at ease.

We waited until Sam had settled down and the attention of the bartender was elsewhere. Then I crossed the room and slid into the seat next to him.

"Hello, Sam," I said.

I'd thought Richard had been surprised to see me materialise in a clearing in the Highlands. He'd only stilled. Sam's entire body flinched, like a double take in a Buster Keaton film.

"Clover!" He looked around quickly, as though expecting the room to be crawling with Guards. "How did you even—You can't be here! I can't be talking to you! Did Lady Winter set this up?"

"Well, what was she supposed to do?" Matthew slid into the seat on the other side of Sam. "You weren't answering my letters."

This time he stilled. He never even turned his head. "Matthew."

"Oh, you recognise me, then?" His voice was so light I think only I heard the effort there. Perhaps not, though. Sam had known a version of my brother that I had never known, in places I couldn't imagine. "It's been over ten years."

"I know. I kept meaning to visit, but—" Sam shook himself, his head darting to each of us in turn. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

"Keep your voice down," Matthew warned softly, with a nod toward the rest of the bar. "You were right—if they find you talking to us, we're all in danger."

Sam's mouth closed at once, though he plainly wasn't happy about it. But then, he didn't look very happy at all. Up close, he had the frayed, worn look of somebody who had been awake for long hours doing work they knew wouldn't be enough.

"We need your help, Sam," I said.

"I tried to help!" His voice was now a furious whisper—directed at Matthew rather than me. "As soon as Berlin told the first minister that Lord Beresford had been murdered with a faerie curse, I sent a raven to your farm to warn you to get out. Do you know what would have happened to me if they'd discovered it?"

"I can imagine," Matthew said. "But—"

Sam was still talking. "I wasn't even supposed to know about it. I just happened to be the one to file the report. I expected the information would be made public that evening. Only instead, the murder was blamed on Lady Beresford with no mention of the curse, the Guards were sent to apprehend you as a precaution, and a few hours later, we were all told that Clover was a suspected collaborator and needed to be hunted down at all costs."

"Even the Guards don't know that Hero isn't Hero?" That startled me, despite everything.

"Most of the Board don't even know it. Only the top ministers, apart from me. What happened, Clover? Why did they come after you? Was it because of Matthew?"

I shook my head. "No. No, it's because of me." Even now, I had to draw a deep breath before going on. "Lady Beresford is under the power of the faerie from Amiens, as I'm sure you've guessed. She and I released that faerie by accident eight years ago, at Ashfield, along with Alden Lennox-Fontaine."

"Dear God," Sam said quietly, without real shock. Clearly, it was less of a surprise than the fact we were at his table. "And Edmund Gaskell, I assume. There's a warrant out for him now too, less public—his family, you know. Lennox-Fontaine, though… I can see why they'd want to keep his involvement quiet. They've pinned their election hopes on him. And it would explain why nobody's seen him today, when he ought to be at the forefront of this. What a mess."

"It's worse than that," I said. "Has the university been evacuated?"

His gaze flickered, just briefly. Sam had many wonderful qualities, but he would never make a spy. "Why would Camford be evacuated?"

"I think you know why. I think all the Board do, even the ones who aren't supposed to. Has it?"

"As it happens," he said, with great dignity, "Camford has been evacuated. It isn't being publicised, but it isn't a secret either. It's a precaution, that's all. Camford has the greatest concentration of Family members, which makes it an attractive target for a magical attack."

"A faerie attack," Matthew said bluntly. "That's what you mean, isn't it?"

"I mean," he said firmly, "a magical attack. What are you doing here, Matthew?" The whisper was straining to be louder. "It's bad enough that Clover's been mixed up in it all. I sent that raven to you so that you would stay away. This isn't your world."

"You made that clear enough after the war, didn't you?" An edge had crept into Matthew's voice. At eighteen, I would have taken it for anger. Now, I knew that it was hurt. "As soon as the war ended, you wanted nothing to do with me."

"Me?" Sam blinked, his mouth opening and closing without words. "That is… How could you think that?"

"What else was I supposed to think?" I put a warning hand on Matthew's arm; he shrugged me off. "The last time I saw you was at the front, do you know that? They had to tell me you hadn't died. I asked to see you, over and over, all those months they held me. You never came. They told me you'd refused."

"I was fighting for you the entire time! The Board wanted you locked up, if not worse. They were furious with me for not letting you die."

"I know. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for what you did for Clover, too, and for sending that raven. But give me one good reason why that meant you never wanted to set eyes on me again."

"I did set eyes on you. Once, at least. It was on a midnight. When the curse took hold. My father took me into the room where you were bound in silver—he said he wanted me to see what it was that I was protecting. You spoke to me. You said what happened was all my fault, and you never wanted to see me again."

Matthew laughed, hard and exasperated and ever so slightly shaken. "That wasn't me! It was never me, those midnights—you were the one who explained that to my family. I'd never have said that."

"You would have thought it."

"How could you possibly have known that?"

"Because it's true !" Sam's voice rose sharply; he caught himself, checked to see if anyone was watching, but he couldn't hold back. "This is my world, magic and Families and faerie curses. I was born into it. You weren't. You never should have known about it. That day at Amiens—I ran off to fight that thing, along with every other mage there. You shouldn't have followed me. But you did."

"Of course I did! I wasn't going to let you go off alone, was I? We always looked out for each other."

"I was the one who should have been hit by that curse. It got you because you were looking out for me. And because of that—because one of our kind unleashed death on a battlefield, because you were fighting alongside me, because you saved my life —my own family locked you up and tried to leave you to rot. Do you have any idea how that feels? How could I look you in the eye and see that reflected in your face?"

"You saved my life too," Matthew said, far more gently. "We're even on that score."

"We aren't even." Sam had dropped his voice, but it didn't matter. His whisper was hot and furious as a scream. "Do you think I don't know how unfair it all is? The only difference between your kind and mine is that magic comes a little easier to us—and after watching Clover all these years, I'm not even sure how much. And yet the Families keep it secret, then act as though we're the only ones who matter just because we have knowledge we've deliberately kept to ourselves. God, it makes me sick. We could have done so much more to help during the war than we did. We could be doing more now. And we don't. You can't tell me you don't feel the same."

"I do," Matthew said, and I'd never heard his voice so soft and so serious. "Of course I do. But I never blamed you for that."

I had been so blind to so much. I had felt it many times over the last few days; I felt it again now, watching Matthew and Sam, finally seeing the jagged wounds between them. It was as though I'd been walking on rotten ground for years, refusing to look down.

Matthew and Sam were looking at each other with something akin to recognition. I hated to break in. I knew this was a conversation that they needed to have—that they'd needed to have ten long years ago and that had been eating them up ever since, and God knows I had enough painful experience with what happened when unspoken things were left to fester and poison and hurt. But every minute in the Illusion was a risk. And outside, Hero was ready to move.

"The Board know who that faerie is and what she wants," I said. "What is it, Sam?"

It took Sam a moment to drag his eyes from Matthew to me. When he did, he only shook his head. "I don't know."

"The governments of the world agreed to seal off faerie country immediately after Amiens. You were the only Family member who made it out of there unscathed. Whatever brought about the Accord, it must have been something you told them."

"It must have been," he agreed. "But I don't know what—or not entirely." He took off his glasses to rub his eyes wearily. Without them he looked younger, softer—one of the many who had been to war before they had had a chance to live, and survived.

"They questioned me for hours after they pulled me out of Amiens," he said. "Not just the Board. There were people from France as well, from Italy, even from Germany and Japan. They wanted to know every detail, as you'd expect, but… it was the oddest things that seemed to bother them."

I thought of Eddie. "The fact that the faerie was a dryad."

"Exactly. They wanted that kept quiet, even from the other Families. That was why they were so worried about Matthew, you know. His curse didn't just threaten to expose our world to non-mages. It was evidence of what had cast it. A dryad in the human world is unusual enough to provoke questions."

I shivered, despite myself. Across from me, Matthew shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"They also," Sam added, "didn't want anyone to know that the circles were no longer secure."

That distracted me. "So they did know that all along."

"They knew," he said. "The Board hadn't come up with a cover story yet; they were talking about it among themselves in only thinly veiled terms. I assume they had tested it for themselves straight away. Whoever that faerie was, it hated us enough to do what no faerie had ever done before, and now all of faerie country knew how it could be done."

"Then why not say that?" Matthew said. "Why not tell the scholars, so they could find a solution?"

"I can only assume," he said, "because they didn't want a solution. They were willing to sacrifice faerie magic entirely to make certain nobody encountered that faerie again—to keep something about it a secret."

"Something," I said, "like the fact that Camford is on stolen faerie ground."

Sam was beyond being surprised now. He only shook his head. "No. That is… Camford is on stolen faerie ground. All the magical universities around the world are. I'm not sure how you found that out, it's meant to be a secret known only to the Board and the Faculty, but you wouldn't be the first to have guessed it. It simply isn't a big enough secret to justify all this. Those leaders weren't talking as though there was a threat to Camford, or academia at large. The entire magical world seemed to be at stake. It's something far worse."

"Like what?" Matthew asked.

"I have no idea. If I had to guess, it was something that happened hundreds of years ago, on the day Camford was born. It's a brutal act, you know, to widen the gap between doors. It ate up great swathes of faerie country. They said the fae never quite forgave it. Our dealings with them were different after that."

"And yet we still dealt with them," I said. "This is the only one who's ever wanted to destroy us."

"Exactly," Sam said. "Whatever this faerie wants, it's personal."

There was no time to worry about it now. If all went as I thought, we would have a chance to ask the faerie directly soon enough.

"Whatever it is, Eddie and I need to get into Camford," I said. "If that lock breaks and the doors between worlds open, she's going to go straight there to take what she wants. We need to be there for her."

His surprise rallied somewhat. "Why? Why should you be the ones to step in?"

There were a lot of answers to that. I gave the one that mattered most. "Because Hero is our friend, the way Matthew was yours. It's my fault the faerie took her, just as you feel it was your fault Matthew was hurt. You broke all the rules to save him. Please, let us try to save her."

"If this really is the faerie from Amiens, then you can't. Believe me. It will kill you without a thought."

"She won't." I tried to believe this with every cell in my body, so that Sam would believe it too. "Hero won't let her."

"I admire your faith in your friend, truly, but there's nothing she can do. There may be nothing of her left at all."

"There is," Matthew said unexpectedly.

Sam looked at him, startled, as did I. "How would you know? You don't know anything about faerie lore."

"I don't need to know about the lore." He leaned forward on the table, folding his arms. "I saw what that thing unleashed at Amiens. I had a fragment of it in my head for years, taking over my body inch by inch, whispering to me in the dark. I know how quickly it kills and how little it cares. But it had Clover and Eddie in its grip back in Paris, and they're unharmed."

"At the Panthéon?" He frowned. "You think Lady Beresford stopped it from killing them."

"I think she's the only thing that could have. And I don't know what the Board's planning to combat this thing, but I don't think they stand a better chance than that."

"No," Sam said slowly. "No, perhaps not. But… I still can't help you. Camford has been evacuated. The doors have been locked for the first time in four hundred years."

"You're a member of the Board," I countered. "You must be able to open them."

Sam opened his mouth to reply. He never got the chance.

At that moment, the Illusion shook.

The entire room juddered; the tables and chairs danced, dust fell from the ceiling like rain, and the rotating lamps bumped and collided with one another. Sam grabbed the table; I, ludicrously, grabbed my drink. Matthew swore quietly, and his hand flew on instinct to his shoulder.

"Before you ask," he said to me, too calm, " that really hurt."

"She's here," Sam said faintly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin; I recognised the faint glow of a doublet charm. No doubt every Board member in the country—in the world—was feeling that same glow.

Eddie ran in from the back door, heedless now of discovery. He was probably right: Anyone recognising him now would have other things on their minds.

"You can see it from the alley," he said, breathless. "There's a forest rising up on St. Paul's."

We weren't the only ones to run for the back door. The bartender, the musicians, the few other early patrons—we all piled out into the narrow alley that branched onto Fleet Street. The shadowy mound of St. Paul's dominated the view, as usual, its enormous size making it loom closer than it really was. It was covered in trees.

Eddie and I had missed the main attack in Paris. By the time we had reached there, the wreckage had been strewn with branches and leaves, Hero had stood wreathed in thorns, but the forest was still, already growing over a ruin. Now it was alive. Trees erupted from the London pavement, sending cracks spidering through the foundations; ivy already half covered the great white dome, sending tiles crashing to the ground like scales falling from a snake. The church was hundreds of feet high, the tallest building in London, the tallest I had ever seen. The forest was tearing it apart as though it were made of clay.

"I'm going to guess that's the site of the third lock," Matthew said from beside me. He leaned heavily against the wall, hand still pressed to his shoulder, and his face was stark white.

Sam gave a barely perceptible nod. "I'm supposed to be there. I'm supposed to be ready to defend it. I—"

"Don't," Matthew said quietly. He didn't need to say any more. They had both been at Amiens. They knew it would do no good.

"That's the end," I heard myself say. I didn't quite believe my own words. It couldn't be. "It's too late. It took her minutes to break through in Paris. We won't get to Camford in time to stop her."

"We can try," Eddie said. Strangely, or not so strangely, his voice held none of the fear rising in my own. He was worried, but his eyes as he watched the trees thrash and groan were soft with wonder. "She has to get to Camford too. If we start out right now—"

"No," Sam interrupted. His jaw had set, and his eyes were suddenly brighter than I had ever seen them. "We can do better than that. There's another door to Camford. The real door—the first door."

His words took a moment to sink in, and when they did, they made no sense. "The first door?"

Sam turned away from the street purposefully, toward me. "The Oxford and Cambridge doors don't look like faerie doors, do they? Have you not wondered yet which is the original, and where the runes have gone?"

I rallied my thoughts with difficulty. Outside, the screams were beginning to reach us; footsteps thundered down Fleet Street as a city of scared people who had already lived through a war fled from something else beyond their imagining. "I didn't… That is, I assumed it was the Oxford door. Alden told me once that the Cambridge door is the same entrance, just a copy."

"They're both copies. The real one—the first one—is far too dangerous for hundreds of prank-loving students to pass through on a daily basis. It's locked up safe where nobody can touch it except the Board. The last time they moved it was during the war, when the air raids began."

The answer came to me a beat before I could ask. Here. It was here. During the war, the Families had moved their valuables underground, to a bunker that had become a nightclub. While we'd been dancing, all those years ago, the door to Camford had been here with us.

"It's right through those doors, down in the vault," Sam confirmed. "That was one reason I asked Lady Winter to come here. I thought she might not come alone, if she came at all. I thought—I thought whatever happened, we might need it."

"And we do." I tried to keep my voice from trembling. "Please, Sam. Let us try. Whatever we do, we can't possibly make it worse."

Outside, the dome of St. Paul's cracked open like a skull. A renewed cry went up from the street, and the building blazed with a hot white glow.

Sam looked at Matthew, and his face set. He nodded. "Downstairs," he said. "Quickly."

The smell of damp and dirt hit me as soon as the vault opened. The room was larger than I had expected, extending well beyond the bounds of the club and under the London streets, and it plainly hadn't been touched for some time. It was packed solid—mostly with crates, though there were several enormous wrapped picture frames and a covered birdcage from which something rustled. On top of everything that was happening outside, the urgency bubbling under my skin, I felt the hairs at the back of my neck rise to attention one by one. The air prickled with strong magic. Everything here was thrilling and dangerous, and everything in my blood knew it.

Most of all, it knew what stood at the back of the room.

Leaning against the far wall was a section of wood panelling that had plainly been cut from a much older building—older than any in Camford, old enough that it would probably have rotted away had it not been protected by strong magic. Inscribed on it in a sweeping arch were the runes I knew all too well. There was no trace of chalk lines here—they had been carved, sure and permanent, and they glittered now with pure moonlight.

This was a true faerie door. Had we been passing through this each time we went to Camford, we would have known it for what it was at once.

"They should have told us," Eddie said beside me, and I knew he was having the same thoughts as I was. When I glanced at him, his face had tightened with that anger he only let out in flashes. "Whatever they did, they had no right to make us part of it."

"No," I said quietly. And yet there was a small, shameful part of me that still wished I didn't know.

I brushed it aside and turned to Matthew and Sam. "You can't come with us," I said. "Especially you, Matty. On the other side of that door is exactly where the curse tried to take you, every time it had you in its power. You can't go."

"I could try," he said, but without his usual conviction. He had stumbled once coming down the stairs, and his eyes had the unfocused, distracted look of somebody working very hard to stay in their own body.

"You'd be lost the moment you stepped across the threshold. You know that's true."

I wasn't surprised when he nodded. "I know." He sighed, frustrated. "Bloody thing. I thought that was all over. I can hear it again, you know?"

"The dryad?" My heart quickened. "You can hear her?"

"Not her. Her tree." There was an odd, remote quality to his voice, beyond the tension that came from pain. "Her tree's somewhere on the other side, in faerie country. It's waiting for her to come home."

"We'll head to St. Paul's," Sam said, with a quick, concerned look at him. "There's going to be people hurt there. Just like last time."

He could have meant Paris. He didn't. The last time for him was another battlefield, the last time they had stood together.

"If Hero's still there," I said, "then don't either of you stick around. You run. Get back home—stop in Manchester and get Iris, if you can—and keep everyone safe. Look after Rose. Please. I don't know what the world is going to be like after today."

"Don't worry," Matthew said, and at least he sounded more like himself. "I'll keep them all safe." He paused, and his voice turned quiet in the way it was very occasionally between us, and never when anybody else was listening. "I know you're a witch, and Eddie's a wizard, and you're more than a match for any faerie. But take care of each other, all right?"

I hugged him tightly. "I will. I know what a risk this is, I promise. It's just that this is what needs to be done."

"Well." He tightened his grip just once, then let me go. "There you are, then. Nothing more to be said."

"One thing," Sam said suddenly. His jaw was set once more. "You'll need this."

With a single shuddering movement, he pulled off his silver ring and held it out. I took it, wondering, a little in awe. Mages never parted with their rings. My own ring was unadorned and woven with the entry spell for Camford only, and yet I couldn't imagine giving it up.

"That will get you through the door there, even with all the Board's safeguards," he said. "It will also get you anywhere you want to go in Camford. Just… don't be too long. If all three locks do break, there are plans in place to reseal them as soon as possible. Whatever the faerie does will have to be quick—an hour, perhaps, no more. That means you have to be quick too. Don't get trapped on the wrong side of those doors when they lock again, or you'll be trapped in faerie country."

The thought of that great ragged wasteland I had glimpsed through the door hit me like a chill. I nodded. "Thank you, Sam. Truly. If we make it through this, I'll do everything I can to make sure this doesn't get back to you."

"I don't care if it does," Sam said stoutly. "This isn't right. Any of it—and I'm not the only one who thinks that. We should have been made aware that we're dealing with a faerie. We should have been told who she was and what she wanted from the start. We should be trying to broker a deal with her, to avoid bloodshed, and we've been forbidden from doing so. We shouldn't be hunting down you and Gaskell without asking questions. Everything's gone wrong, somehow—perhaps it's been wrong for a long time. It needs to be put right."

I could only nod, my throat tight. I gave them both one last quick smile, then turned to Eddie. He had been watching the door the entire time, his eyes thoughtful, his face far away. When I spoke his name, he came back to me with effort.

"Are you ready?" I asked, for all the world as though we were a basket of sandwiches away from embarking on a picnic. It was only that it had struck me, like a blade through the heart, that this might be the last we would see of anyone, ever again. "I mean… would you like to phone someone first? Richard? Your family?"

Eddie shook his head. "My family and I aren't really on speaking terms these days. And Richard's safe with Lady Winter. The only other person I'd call at the end of the world would have been you." He gave me the smallest flicker of a smile, faint and transparent as mist on glass. "Are you ready?"

I couldn't find a smile of my own—the one I had given Matthew and Sam had been my last—but I took his hand in mine and held it tightly. "Let's go."

Together, we stepped forward, and into another world.