29

29

C lover."

The voice was saying my name—gentle, insistent. A memory caught and sparked: a summer's morning in Ashfield, lying on the floor, eighteen years old and about to open my eyes to the new world our mistakes had made.

But it wasn't Alden's voice this time. And when I opened my eyes, blinking hazily, it was not to the Ashfield drawing room. I lay on the cracked ruins of the stone floor, rubble and shattered glass strewn about me. Above was the canopy of a forest. Branches and boughs thick with leaves crossed over my head; through them filtered grey-gold light, and patches of a cloudy sky. The wind teased at the branches, and the leaves whispered. I frowned, wondering, still only half-aware of where I was.

"Clover?" It was Eddie. I recognised his voice with a rush of relief, and when I turned my head, I saw him crouched beside me. There was a long crack across one lens of my spectacles that blurred his face, but he seemed unscathed, and his own sigh of relief was unmistakable. "Thank God. Are you all right?"

"I think so." Feeling was beginning to come back to my body, and with it a hundred vague aches and bruises. More importantly, I was becoming aware of another hand still clasped in my own. I turned toward it, careful not to let go, and came face-to-face with Hero. She lay curled on one side, eyes closed, her face pale and still.

"She's alive," Eddie said quickly, before I had time to wonder. "But I don't know who she is. I don't know if the faerie left."

"Neither do I," I said, because the part of me that did know was so tentative, and it felt too dangerous to say for sure. Something had left, though, hadn't it? I had felt it as the buildings fell—a kiss of the wind, a breeze like the air off the sea.

As I watched, Hero's eyelids flickered; her brow furrowed. I sat up quickly, my hand still tight around hers, scarcely daring to breathe. Eddie dropped to his knees beside me; we exchanged quick glances, brimming with hope and fear in equal measures.

"Hero?" I said softly, as though her name were a spell.

Hero gave a single shiver, then her breath caught with a gasp. Her dark eyes flickered open and met mine, and for the first time in eight years they housed no soul but hers.

"Clover," she said, and then my arms were wrapped around her, and hers around me were strong and wiry and frail all at the same time. I clung to her tightly and buried my face in her shoulder. She was trembling; I'm sure I was too.

"Are you all right?" Eddie asked, as we parted. "Is the dryad really gone?"

Hero nodded. "She's gone. She's gone back to her tree."

"I'm so sorry," I said in a rush. I had said it to the faerie many times, hoping Hero could hear. This was the first time I had been able to say it and know she could. "It was my fault, all of it."

"Oh, shut up." It would have been convincing had she not still been shivering as if she would fly apart. Still, her head had its old proud tilt and her eyes their old warmth. "Never mind. It was far from all your fault, and the parts that were I forgave you for when you came for me in Paris."

"I don't know if I can forgive myself."

"I'm the one who spent years trapped in my own body married to a man I hated before going on a murdering spree across three countries. If I can forgive, you certainly should. Oh, hell." She wiped irritably at her eyes, from which tears had spilled, and drew a deep, shuddering breath. Her limbs were stiff and clumsy, the first time in years she had moved them of her own volition. "I swore when I finally got control of my own body I wouldn't let it cry."

"Oh, that old promise," Eddie said, with his crooked smile. "I break that one every day."

Hero laughed, shakily, and drew him into a tight embrace. "God, I've missed you both."

That reminded me, inevitably, of the one we weren't speaking about, the one who was still missing. "Where's Alden?" I made myself ask.

"I don't know," Eddie said. "I couldn't find him. At first I couldn't even find you. The whole building came down. I wasn't sure if the trees had stopped you being buried."

That was where we were, I realised, too late. Still in the midst of Camford, only the library had gone. It had all gone. And the trees…

I looked up at the boughs encircling us. "Did you…?"

"I asked them to shield us." His face was coming into clearer focus now—the blurriness hadn't all been my glasses. He looked white and tired, and there was a cut over one eyebrow. "I don't know if it was me they listened to. What did you do? Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine." I meant it now, at least physically. The aches had settled to a dull throb, and that appeared to be where they planned to stay. "But…"

My eyes flickered against their will to the wreckage, the great smashed glass dome overhead and the books strewn and smoking beside us.

"This was the library ," I said inadequately. It was the library. My library. It had let me in, welcomed me, and I had used that to destroy it. "I don't know if I did the right thing, or…"

"You did," Eddie said, more certain than I'd ever heard him. "It wasn't right. Any of it."

"It wasn't." Hero was calm now, her eyes serious. "I lived in the dryad's head for so long, or rather it lived in mine. Its anger was terrible, day in and day out until I thought I would go mad locked up with it. But it had been wronged. It needed to be put right."

I knew it did. I'd known it as I did it, and I'd done it with all of my heart. Still, looking at the library crumbling around me, the buildings I'd loved for so long torn from the riven ground, my heart was cracked and bleeding in my chest. The magic that had been mine all too briefly was already dead in my veins. And soon, too soon, the rest of our magic would start to die too.

I said none of this. It was selfish and weak, and it wouldn't help. But oh God, I felt it.

Instead, I drew a deep breath and dashed the tears from my eyes. "We need to get out of here."

It was inarguable. The problem was, there was nowhere to go. Camford lay in ruins—the gate was torn open now, and the Oxbridge would have collapsed. We were in faerie country now, with nothing except reclaimed forest and wasteland for miles in either direction.

"Could we make a new door?" Eddie asked, his thoughts clearly running on similar lines. "Is that possible, from this side?"

I shook my head. "No. If it were, the fae would be through all the time. Besides, Sam said there were plans to reinstate the locks almost at once. Faerie country will be closed again by now."

Alden's voice came, quiet and husky. "Ashfield."

We turned, sharp, defensive. Eddie rose to his feet, and the vines around the wreckage twisted and rustled. I think we had all been secretly hoping that Alden had vanished, and we would never have to know what became of him.

I was shocked when I saw him. He was barely standing, supported by a crumpled pillar that had once belonged to the staircase; one arm was at an unnatural angle and he was bleeding from a cut on his temple. All the colour had drained from him—not only from his skin, but from the gold of his hair, the blue of his eyes. Even his clothes were so covered in fine ash that they seemed to have greyed at a stroke.

"Don't worry," he said, with the faintest twitch of his mouth. Had it not been for that almost-smile, I wouldn't have recognised him. "You're in no danger from me. The faerie's gone. It's over."

It was far from over. But the faerie had gone, and perhaps it had, at last, gone as far as Alden was willing to go. I didn't quite relax, but I stood.

"What was that about Ashfield?" I asked.

"The door there won't have locked," he said, as though this was a perfectly theoretical conversation we were having in the library years ago. "I left it open when I crossed faerie country to get here. It will stay open, just as it did the first time."

"Could you find your way back?" Eddie asked.

"I found my way here. I don't see why not."

"I know the way too," Hero said slowly. She stood beside me, shakily at first, rapidly regaining her balance. "The dryad knew."

The three of us exchanged uncertain glances. It was strange, after all these years, how easy it was to fall into the old, half-subconscious patterns of communication: I knew, at a glance, that Hero was sceptical but inclined to follow, that Eddie was wary, that both were taking in my own conflict between doubt and hope. Alden clearly knew too, because he gave a short, breathless sigh.

"I'm not asking to be trusted," he said. "I only said I know the way home. You can come with me or not, if you like." He paused, and whatever he claimed he wasn't asking, when he spoke again there was a defensive edge to his voice. "I know you all hate me. I don't care. I know I deserve it, and I don't care about that either. But for what it's worth, Hero, I truly did believe I couldn't save you."

Hero snorted. "Of course you did. It suited you to. You know, I always did think I had no illusions about you, Alden. I thought I knew every one of your faults, and your charm didn't work on me. I had the audacity to warn Clover about you. I underestimated you."

"Perhaps you overestimated me."

"Perhaps." She shook her head. "You were willing to throw us all away for your own ends. The fact you flinched from it at the last moment is neither here nor there. I don't hate you. But that's only because I've been swimming in somebody else's hate for years, and I'm exhausted of it."

"I hate you quite a bit," Eddie offered. "If that helps."

Alden's soft laugh dissolved into a harsh, wrenching cough; he stifled it with a wince and cleared his throat. "I know you do. It's fair. A shame, though, because whatever you think, I've always liked you very much." He didn't look at me at all. "Well? Are you following me?"

"We'll follow," Hero said, after a quick questioning glance in my direction and Eddie's. "Just don't think for a moment this means you're forgiven."

"I'm not asking for forgiveness either," Alden said.

And so we set out across faerie country, the four of us, as we had often talked of doing those long summer evenings at Ashfield.

It was a long, hard road, far longer and harder than I could have imagined. Alden had arrived so quickly at Camford that I would have expected us to be at the Ashfield gate within half an hour at the outside. But either we took a wrong turn, the ground had shifted when the gates opened, or time simply didn't have the same meaning in faerie country, because the great grey wastes stretched out forever.

The ground was thick with roots and vines, so that it was impossible to move without placing your feet carefully or struggling through thorns. Any exposed skin was soon scored by stinging scratches, and more than once I fell hard on the earth. And the earth was hard, so cold and tight-packed it felt more like rock. The wind screamed constantly, voices in our languages and others intertwining, half-understood. It buffeted our hair and clothes until I felt my reason threaten to tear loose and blow away with it. Worst of all was the laughter. It swirled in the air, always just out of earshot, high and lilting and sending shivers tapping up my spine. I understood now why Alden had arrived in the state he had.

Eddie was the only one among us who didn't seem to feel it. At times the trees would raise their roots and the vines would grip at our ankles; a soft word from him and they settled, rustling their leaves threateningly. I wondered at it, and at his confidence stepping through the foliage, head high and eyes alight with curiosity.

Hero clearly saw the same thing. "I see you've mastered the roses." She was breathless, but I could see she was beginning to settle into her limbs. She was very tired, though. The faerie had taken her body through fire and battle and the gates between worlds. "It was very impressive, what you did back there."

"Not mastered," he corrected, with a shy smile. "They'll listen to me, though. Once Alden bound you—the faerie—they were willing to be persuaded."

He glanced at Alden then, and away again without a word. None of us had spoken to Alden since we had set out, and he hadn't spoken to us. He walked a little ahead, not looking back, an Orpheus with a string of Eurydices whom he had never meant to bring home.

The great silver sky began to darken and the air to cool. Perspiration turned cold on my skin, and I was soon shivering. There were rustles and snaps from the surrounding dimness, and more than once I caught the movement of tiny imps out of the corner of my eye. If we were still here when night fell, we had every chance of being attacked. I remembered the flashing teeth and screams of the imp at the Bodleian, all those years ago, and felt sick.

"No wonder the fae want to come to our world if this is all they have," I said out loud.

It was a meaningless comment, bravado in the face of exhaustion, but Hero shook her head. "It isn't," she said unexpectedly. "These are the outskirts, where the edges touch the human world and the doors open. That's why we haven't seen any life, except the imps who feed off the deadwood. Toward the centre, the trees grow bigger and wind themselves into great cities, and at the very centre is the fae court, where the queen resides."

For just a flash, I could see it, the great starry court thronged with fae of every shape and description, and I wished with a longing like a physical stab that we could turn aside from our course and see it for ourselves. Hero caught my expression and gave a bitter smile.

"The faerie grew up there," she explained. "She loved the dancing and the great branches glittering like starlight. But she couldn't forget her sister."

"No," I said quietly. I thought of my brother, away all those years in that vast no-man's-land of barbed wire and death; of Alden's brother, growing paler and more distant at the faerie court; of the oak faerie, sleeping in the tree while the students of Camford milled oblivious around her, and of Hero locked inside her own head while we all did the same. We had all done so many foolish and terrible things trying to save the people we loved. The world had been changed because of it, because we had broken it and battered it and held fast until we had reshaped it into what it needed to be. I still didn't know—perhaps would never know—if I had bent it into a better shape. Yet the faerie of the oak was free, and I had Matthew and Rose and Sam and my family safe in the world, and Hero and Eddie were both walking at my side to the edges of the earth. I could live without Camford, without Ashfield, even without magic, for that.

Alden never said a word, but it was more obvious with every passing mile that there was something very wrong. His breathing came shallow and ragged, he flinched spasmodically at each misstep, and more than once he stumbled. When we stopped to rest under the shade of a twisted yew tree, he collapsed, racked by deep, rasping coughs that he tried and failed to stifle in his sleeve. When he pulled his arm away, the shirt cuff was stained with blood.

Hero and Eddie ignored him. They sank down with me some distance away, quiet, recovering our breath. There was some water left in the bottle in my satchel, the one I'd filled at Calais, and I passed it around. They didn't move when, after a moment's hesitation, I pulled myself stiffly to my feet and took the last of it over to Alden—though they didn't protest either.

He looked up, slightly surprised at my approach, and shook his head at the proffered bottle.

"Keep it," he said. "It's not far now."

I put it away. "Are you all right?"

His mouth quirked very slightly. "Do you really care?"

"Yes," I said honestly. "God knows why, but yes."

"Thank you. No, to answer your question, but I'll do." He coughed again, and when he spoke there was a strange quality to his voice—soft, almost shy. "What's she like, our daughter? Rose, I think you said?"

"I don't know her as well as I should." I knelt on the ground beside him and tried to recall my little girl to my mind.

I had taken far too long to realise that she was coming. I'm not sure why—I grew up on a farm, I knew the signs. Perhaps I've always been better than I want to admit at ignoring things I don't want to know. I was back at Camford by the time it dawned on me, and by then even I couldn't ignore that things between the four of us had changed. Hero was gone, Eddie was fast going too, Alden refused to look at me. I was eighteen, fighting for a career in a world that wanted to lock me out, and instead I was on the brink of unwed motherhood. I could have sought a way to get rid of her, with or without magic, but somehow I shied from the thought. She was too tied up in that golden summer, in the glowing days and silver nights before it all went wrong. She would be Family by blood, a magical child born of one precious night when everything seemed possible. I wanted her in the world, whatever it cost.

In the end, it had cost me both too little and too much. Matthew and Jemima were happy to raise her—the more so because Matthew was firmly against having children of his own with a faerie curse still lurking in his blood. I had been very lucky and very stubborn, and I had been able to hide her as she grew inside me for those long months. In the spring holidays, I had told anyone at Camford who cared that my sister-in-law was having a baby and I was going to the farm to help her. I was almost too late—she came early, only my second evening at home, and by dawn there she was, a fair-haired, pink-faced child screaming at the top of her gloriously healthy lungs. After a month I was back at Camford, and nobody noticed that I was exhausted and unwell and sometimes on the verge of tears, until eventually I wasn't.

I loved her, truly. I had seen many babies, my own younger siblings included; I hadn't been prepared for how wondrous she would be, how precisely and exquisitely a piece of my heart would be wrenched from my body and given fragile, perfect form in the world. I hadn't realised how many nights I would cry helplessly alone in the dark as Camford glittered outside, and no work could fill the aching hole that had been carved in me. I didn't realise how scared I would feel for her, all the time. But she was happy with my family—far more so than she would have been with me—and I told myself it was for the best. I had given and taken too much to give up on Camford now. Besides, no matter how I tried, I couldn't shake the feeling that she was Alden's child, not mine. From the beginning, I could see the magic sparking in her blood, and I'd known it had come from him. After that, I began to see him in her cleverness, her charm, the gold of her hair and the delightful lilt of her laugh. I had told myself that Matthew and Jemima were her parents, and what didn't come from them came from the Families. I loved her as an aunt or a godmother, through birthdays and Christmases and letters and presents, and I'd told myself that was right.

And yet her magic hadn't come from Alden after all. It had come from me too. I had breathed it in, and it had blossomed in my veins. I had given it to her, exactly as I'd wished to, and now that I'd taken it away, I could teach her how to find it again with the rest of us. It could all be different, in the new world on the other side of the door.

"She has your hair and eyes," I said slowly, because Alden was still waiting for an answer. "My face, though, which was fortunate because everyone always says how much she looks like Matthew. She loves games, and learning, and magic. She's mischievous and daring, but she's kind too—she'll do what she's told by those she loves, and nobody else. And she never gives up."

It wasn't enough. But it was a start.

His smile was real this time. "God help Camford when she gets there."

"There is no Camford." It was just beginning to sink in, like a wound I would feel every day for the rest of my life. "It's gone."

"Well, there will be something else in its place soon enough," he said, unperturbed. "And then God help it."

It was obvious when the Ashfield door at last drew near. The ground beneath our feet was the first to change. It smoothed, the roots becoming softer, the slope gentler. Yellow grass began to creep across the thorny stones, and stray wisps of cloud hung in the darkening sky. I thought I heard the burble of water, though that might have been my mind playing tricks. The bottle was long since empty, and my tongue was thick and parched.

And then, there it was: the spare room door, outlined in silver, hanging above the tangled undergrowth. My heart, which had not dared feel beyond the next few steps, skyrocketed in my chest. I started to run, stiffly, stumbling, and Eddie and Hero quickened their pace beside me.

Alden didn't—I don't think he could. He was barely stumbling forward, his face the colour of chalk, blood at the corner of his mouth. But he sighed as he caught up to us.

"There," he whispered. "I said I'd find it."

I looked at him askance, out of sheer habit, and his mouth twitched.

"Well," he amended. "I said I'd try."

Ashfield was on the other side of that door. I hadn't seen it in so long, and amidst everything my chest ached with longing. I would be arrested soon, and Hero and Eddie with me. Alden would probably be given a medal, once they'd cleaned him up enough to take the weight. And yet I had walked through faerie country and come home to Ashfield. They couldn't take that from me.

"Come on," Hero said briskly. "One at a time."

Alden shook his head.

"You three go through," he said. "Go through, close it behind you, and set the whole bloody thing alight. That's the only way to be certain it's closed from our side. It still isn't enough. Last time the dryad was able to keep it open a crack—even when the door became subject to the Accord, and the faerie was loose in the world, the door never quite faded as it should. We can't leave it that way. I need to close it from this side too."

Hero raised her eyebrow, and I recognised it from a long time ago as a way to cover her surprise until she could work out what to feel. "This is a strange and uncharacteristic time to be a martyr."

"This isn't martyrdom, and it isn't a new decision. I told you, I came to fix what I did all those years ago. I've done some very questionable things to get here, as I'm sure you'll all agree, and I kept doing them over and over, because I told myself that the ends would justify the means, or some such thing…" He paused for breath, a hand to his ribs, and half laughed. "Honestly, I can't remember what I told myself. Never mind, either way the end failed. I can't kill the faerie now; I can't bring Thomas back. I don't even know now if he was alive here to start with. At least I can still do this. I can make sure this door is closed once and for all."

"But…" I swallowed, possibilities turning over in my weary mind. "You'll be trapped here, forever. You'll die here."

"I am aware," he said, very calmly, though I saw his fist clench and unclench. "Thank you, again, for caring. It's very generous of you, under the circumstances."

"Too generous," Hero agreed, "but she's right. Right now, I know this place as well as any on earth, and you will die here. If you really want to fix your mistakes, wouldn't it be better to come back and fix them properly for once in your bloody life?"

"Possibly," he conceded, with the faintest ghost of a smile. "But you really do keep overestimating me, Hero. I'm too much of a coward for that. Besides, that won't close the door, and it truly does need to be closed. It's been open too long, all those years with that faerie testing it and trying to break through. It's a weak point in the veil between worlds now. If the faerie doesn't push through it again, something else might, or the Board will find a way to use it from the other side. Either way, I think we've had enough to do with the fae, don't you?"

Against my will, I remembered the feel of Hero's wrist in my hand, and the promise I had made. We'll see the last of the doors are closed forever. We'll never trouble you again. Just let her go.

It had been a promise, not a bargain. We weren't held to it. But it was what the faerie had wanted, and she was right. There could be no more deals between us, not safely, not for now. We had broken faith with them too many times.

"Yes," I said. "I do think so. I also think the door should be closed, on both sides if we can. There has to be another way, though."

"I don't want another way," he said bluntly. "I mean what I said: I'm a coward. I never once intended to face what I'd done. I'm not even sure I can face the world out there now. I don't think any of you ever realised, but I liked things the way they were. The old world suited me. I'm not fitted for a new one."

He meant it, I knew that. It was the same brutal honesty he'd given to me eight years ago on the other side of this very door, as heartfelt and troubling as an unwanted gift. Yet I couldn't help but feel in a great rush how different things might have been if Alden had ever been half as clear-eyed about fixing his deficiencies as he had been in identifying them, how wide the chasm had always been between who he could have been and who he let himself become.

"It's getting dark," he said into the silence. "You don't want to be in faerie country after dark. And, to be frank, if we wait much longer, I might not have the strength left to close the door at all. It's been a very, very long day."

Hero nodded slowly. She, after all, must have known better than any of us how dangerous it could be to leave the door half-open. And he had betrayed her—over and over, in small ways and large, up until the last possible second that should have weighed feather-light against eight years. She had tried to save him once and nearly lost herself. She owed him nothing. But Eddie had been right that friendship is so rarely about what is owed, or even deserved.

"Well, then." Her voice tried for brisk, but it had been a long time since she had used it, and she had lost the knack. "Then I suppose we'd best say good-night, hadn't we?"

She started toward the door. Then, as if on impulse, she turned back and gave him a swift, light kiss.

"Sleep well," she said, very softly, and then she walked out of faerie country.

Eddie had been watching Alden quietly, without saying a word. I thought he was going to leave without a word. Then at the last moment, he too turned.

"I'm sorry you couldn't save Thomas," he said in a rush. "Thank you for standing up for me, back at Crawley. You were the only one who did, and it meant a lot."

"Oh." Alden blinked, slightly startled. "You're welcome. And thank you. I'm sorry too."

He might have meant about Thomas, or he might not have.

Then it was just the two of us, and the night closing in. The screeches of the imps were getting louder, and the air around was cold. It had been cold the last time I had heard that sound, in the Bodleian, when we had unleashed a nightmare and giggled about it helplessly as Oxford had spun into the new year.

For the last time, his eyes met mine. Just for a second, in a searing flash of dust and sunlight and the smell of old paper, we were in the Camford Library with the whole world spread before us. What are you reading? he had asked, and he had laughed as if I had meant it when I said, A book.

I had loved him from that moment. It was a strange, intense, complicated love, wrapped around Camford and Hero and Eddie and Ashfield and a whole shimmering way of life, embedded in my heart like a climbing rose. I didn't know what to do with that love now, but I was grateful for it nonetheless.

I think something similar must have come to him, because a smile flickered and then faded on his face.

"Don't tell Rose about me, please," he said abruptly. I think it surprised even him. "I'd rather she not think of me the way you'll have to describe me."

In the end, I was the only one who left without a word. I couldn't speak. I nodded tightly.

Then I stepped through the gate, and he was gone. I tried to look back one more time, at the last threshold between worlds, but there was nothing behind me except mist.

The room at Ashfield was bathed in moonlight once more. This time, there was no mystery about where it came from. A cloudy night had fallen outside, but the silvery light of the last faerie door glowed even as I passed through and sank, head spinning, to my knees. The other two were bent similarly, catching their breath in ragged gasps. My body was light, untethered, ears roaring as though I'd stood up too quickly. I found myself gripping the rug, trying not to float away.

My head settled soon; so, less welcome, did every throb and ache of my limbs. I could make sense of the familiar surroundings: the sofa, the fireplace, the door that led to the east wing. I marvelled at how unchanged it was. I shouldn't have, I suppose. Ashfield had stood all but unchanged for centuries.

Hero got to her feet first, rubbing a hand across her eyes, and turned to the wall. I expected her to speak the usual words to close a faerie door. Instead, she lifted her chin, and she raised her voice in the unearthly lilt of the faerie tongue.

The silver lines across the wallpaper evaporated. I turned to her, eyes wide, and she gave me a shadow of her old wicked smile.

"I wondered if that would still work," she said. "I only have a few words left. They're difficult, but I always liked spellcraft linguistics."

"You could write a paper," I said stupidly. My head was still dizzy. "The Faculty—" I broke off, remembering anew the tumbling library and the closed door. Yet why not? There was still a Faculty, after all. The people hadn't gone anywhere. There were many books left, in private libraries across the country. And it only took ink and a page to write a paper.

Eddie was getting to his feet too, stumbling. "Has Alden closed the other side?"

Hero tilted her head to one side, as if listening. For just a moment, I glimpsed the faerie who had been in her head most of her adult life. "It's closed," she said, with a nod. "On both sides."

"It isn't enough," I said. This time, I refused to even think about the ache in my chest. "Alden was right. We need to close it forever this time."

I didn't need to say anything further. We had all been there. It had been vital that both sides be closed—if they weren't, nothing we did to our side of the door would be enough. But even a closed door could be opened.

It needed to be burned. Not just the door, or the room, or even the east wing. The faerie had been able to see over all of Ashfield—the magic had embedded itself throughout the whole house. It all needed to go. Ashfield needed to burn.

"We'd better do it quickly," Hero said, and I nodded.

"I'll go to the servants' quarters," Eddie said quietly. His eyes held mine, sympathetic, then let them go. "I'll make sure everyone gets out."

I turned to the door as he left. I knew the spell to light a fire. I had used it a hundred times, a thousand. I had burned my own motorcar with it only days ago, at what seemed the end of another life. It should have been nothing, after Camford. Yet my fingers felt numb and frozen, and my mind was the same.

The act of freeing a faerie, the act of stepping through a door… those were things that could be done without thought to the consequences. Setting fire to Ashfield felt too deliberate, too much like real destruction. This, of all things, I couldn't do.

Hero laid a hand gently on my arm.

"It's all right," she said. "I'll do it. I told you, I never did like this room."

She drew herself upright, eyes flashing. For the second time, she spoke the faerie tongue.

The wall burst into flame.

Faerie fire blazed a good deal hotter and brighter than even mage fire. By the time we joined the servants on the front lawn, coughing and soot-streaked, the flames had eaten the entire east wing and were licking at the main building. I don't know what Eddie had said to Morgan and the other servants—or, perhaps, he'd had no need to say very much at all. They had lived in that house a long time, and whatever magic their masters had tried to keep from them, they had as many brains and eyes between them as any other group of people. Either way, some of them shifted uneasily; not one moved forward to put the fire out.

I found after a while that Hero was holding my right hand, and Eddie was holding the other—also that I was silently weeping and suspected they were doing the same. A light Yorkshire drizzle fell on the grass, but it didn't touch the blaze. Instead, the firelight caught it, turned it to a million flecks of light that sparked and disappeared in the heat. Through the tears that blurred my eyes, the great manor house seemed surrounded by a halo of gold.

In my head, Ashfield was always golden. Baked in relentless summer sun, yellowing fields around it, sunbeams slanting into the old warm rooms and turning the dust motes into specks of light. It didn't seem right that my last sight of it was on a damp night without even a moon—that I hadn't seen it in daylight since the morning after the door opened, and now I would never see it again.

It takes a long time for a building to burn. Long, heartbreaking hours, as ash falls from the sky like snow and clings to your hair and eyelashes, as ancient staircases and corridors and your funny crooked bedroom are devoured one by one. We stayed those long hours, as the great beams cracked and the roof toppled, as the stones fell, as Alden's last smile flickered in my head over and over.

The sky was turning red overhead when Hero's hand tightened spasmodically around mine and Eddie caught his breath. I might have been dozing, because it wasn't until I blinked that I saw what they had seen.

A figure was walking out of the flames.

He was a young man, perhaps not yet twenty, dressed in a simple dress shirt and trousers with his fair hair cut short and his face clean-shaven. His feet were bare, but he crossed the grass and mud without a thought, as though he were stepping on something else entirely. He might have been a ghost, had his frame not been so solidly built, and had his eyes not so clearly lit on us as he came forward.

"Hello," he said. His brow was furrowed, puzzled, not concerned, like a man who had missed a turning on the road or was trying to remember a dream. "I'm sorry, it's the strangest thing, but can you tell me where I am?"

I wondered only where on earth he could have come from. He was a stranger to me, though I could see he looked familiar in some way: his blond hair, his well-shaped face, his blue eyes. It was only when Hero caught her breath and said his name aloud that I realised I was face-to-face with Thomas Lennox-Fontaine.