Chapter Three
The door slams against the frame and a shriek pierces the air.
Pig bounds off my lap as I bolt up and scream myself. It seems the correct thing to do.
There’s a maid at the threshold holding her hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I didn’t know who was in my
bed.”
I rise sheepishly, still in my rumpled ball gown, my tiara on the pillow beside me.
“I’ll give you your room back,” I apologize. “I just got lost.”
The maid delivers me like a child to Lottie, who is already with my ladies-in-waiting. Together, they rearrange me into something
resembling a presentable queen. I can’t stop glancing at Olive as Lottie winds my blond hair into a coronet of braids.
Olive notices me staring and pulls a funny face.
I hate Rhion for making me doubt her for one moment. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s one less person I can trust
when the number is already so few.
The morning sun streams like water through the central staircase as I descend. I have no desire to spend my morning with Rhion, but I am a little relieved at the second chance to make a good impression after last night’s disaster.
I pull my white ermine cape tight around my shoulders and step out into the brisk October morning.
The Royal Crescent is in complete shambles after last night’s revel. The frost-covered lawn is covered in a rainbow of confetti,
the burned-out skeletons of bonfires, and even a few fae, still sleeping off their hangovers.
At the bottom of our steps, I trip over something, barely catching myself before I topple over completely.
It’s someone covered up by a maroon cloak. I nudge them with the toe of my boot, hoping to wake the drunkard and send them
on their way.
They don’t stir, so I nudge again, a little harder this time.
The person rolls onto their back with a flop and I stumble, gasping with my hand over my mouth. It’s not a person, at least
not anymore.
The lifeless eyes of the girl in the deer mask from last night stare up at me, ghost pale and unseeing. The deer mask lies
next to her head, dirty and askew.
The footman must hear me scream, because he comes running out the door after me. “Your Majesty?” he asks. It’s unsettling
to hear his voice. Bram’s cadre of servants so rarely speak.
“She’s—” The words get stuck in my throat like day-old bread.
I don’t need to finish my sentence. He sees it as clearly as I do.
He pushes past me, takes off his coat, and drapes it over her body.
Her begging from last night rings in my ears, sharp like noon church bells.
She asked me to help her and I did nothing.
She looks even younger without the mask, no older than seventeen.
I’m going to be sick. I kneel at her side, my tears landing in fat splotches all over her ruined cloak.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, even knowing she can’t hear me. “I’m so sorry.”
I never even asked her name.
Another footman appears, and with one carrying her arms, and another carrying her legs, they haul her away.
I’m left standing alone in tears on the sidewalk.
“Greetings!” comes a cheery voice behind me.
I turn to see Rhion poking his head out of his front door. “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
I wipe my eyes, but it’s still clear I was crying.
“Oh no.” Rhion’s face falls as he sees me. “You’re crying. Wait—let me guess why.”
“Um,” I hesitate.
“Burnt toast, bad dream, money trouble, unrequited love, homesickness—” He lists them out on his fingers.
“None of those,” I reply. “But I’ll take some unburnt toast if you have it.” I have no desire to speak of the girl in the
deer mask to Rhion. Either he’d understand my sadness and report my dissatisfaction with their courtly games to Bram, or he
wouldn’t understand and I’d be left trying to explain to an immortal why human life is precious. I’ve had four months to become
an expert in hiding my emotions.
I get a better look at Rhion. He’s dressed even more unusually today. He’s wearing riding breeches, a woman’s corset, a pale
blue silk evening coat, and about a dozen diamond necklaces.
I’m struck, as I often am in the presence of the fae, by how young he looks. Rhion doesn’t seem any older than eighteen or nineteen with his wild mop of dark hair and the faint smattering of freckles across his perfect nose. In truth, he must be nearly a century, if he’s Bram’s oldest friend.
In his receiving room, an elaborate breakfast has been laid out across side tables, coffee tables, tufted stools, and even
the grand piano.
“I didn’t realize we’d have company,” I say, more out of surprise than anything. There are at least ten humans in this room,
Rhion’s pets, all dressed as oddly as he is. They’re young, a little hollow-eyed, clearly hungover after last night. One man
is still fast asleep, snoring softly on a chaise by the fire.
“Oh, there’s always a rotation,” Rhion says dismissively. A pretty brunette approaches him and he plants a kiss on her cheek
affectionately.
“Your wife?” I ask as I take one of the few available seats.
He laughs. “Oh no. We met last night, I think.” He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “What’s your name, beautiful?”
“Libby!” she hollers, and goes back to sipping a bottle of champagne she’s just pulled from between the floral couch cushions.
Rhion turns back to me. “I’m unattached. I don’t share Bram’s respect for the institution of marriage.”
“Does he respect it?” It’s too bold a question but I can’t help myself.
Rhion takes a bite of croissant and shrugs. “You should hear how he speaks about you when you’re not around.”
I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t like the idea that Bram speaks about me much at all.
“And what of my sister?”
A curious expression flickers over Rhion’s face. If I had to put a name to it, I’d call it pain. “Oh, Lydia” is all he says.
“You know her?” I gasp. “Is she in the Otherworld now? Is she all right?”
Rhion frowns. “I’d rather talk about you, Your Majesty.” He plops down on a worn armchair by the fire, and, like flowers toward
the sun, all the humans in the room shift toward him. Two spectacularly pretty girls position themselves at his feet and curl
up like elegant cats.
“I’m grateful for your time. You’ve spent so much time learning our customs”—I gesture to his outfit, halfway sarcastically—“yet
I still know so little of the Otherworld. Please.” I can’t stop myself from begging. My heart is racing at the mention of
Lydia’s name.
I look to the doorway and spot one of my footmen standing like a tin soldier. He must have finished disposing of the deer
mask girl’s body. I wonder what they did with it. Every time I blink, I see her eyes staring up at me from the sidewalk.
I turn back to Rhion. With the footman watching me, I’ll have to be careful. I can’t ask about how to get to the Otherworld
directly like I did yesterday. But maybe if I’m lucky, if I make Rhion like me, he’ll let his guard down eventually. I don’t
doubt his loyalty to Bram, but he does seem to be careless.
“Did you ask your friend about her errands?” He completely ignores my previous remark and my hope deflates.
“There’s no need, I trust her.”
Rhion glances at one of his pets knowingly. “Tell me, Benedict, did I imagine it?”
Benedict, who is in an undershirt and a tricorne hat, strokes Rhion’s shoulder affectionately. “No, my lord.”
Rhion turns to me, as if to say Ha!
The freckle-faced girl at his feet passes him the bottle of champagne and he takes a swig. “What has a neck but no head?”
“Excuse me?”
“A bottle!” He laughs and offers it to me.
“I don’t make a habit of drinking before ten a.m.” I don’t make a habit of drinking ever, particularly around the Others, but that seems rude to say.
“How have you found England? Is it much different than home?” I make a second attempt at conversation.
“Damper here. I don’t know how you stand it. But I recently learned about the umbrella. A fascinating contraption. We’d never have the patience to devise such a thing back home. We’d simply magick the cloud to
stop raining. It’s why I love you.” I’m not quite sure who he’s speaking to when he says you, but he reaches down and pats the brunette’s head.
“If you dislike the damp so much, why stay through the winter? It’s only going to get worse. You could return to the Otherworld.
Bram and I could go with you. I could see my sister.”
He gestures to the people around the room. I swear, five more have entered since we began talking. I don’t know where they’re
coming from. “How could I leave now?”
“Are any more lords soon to arrive?” From what I have gathered, the Otherworld court doesn’t bother with the array of titles we have here.
There are no viscounts or dukes or baronets.
There is simply King Bram and the lords and ladies under him.
The first night the portal was open—our wedding night—Bram brought over the twelve most important lords, the men who make up his council, and their wives.
In the months since, he’s transported more aristocracy and members of his guard.
Every few weeks he goes missing for a day or two, and suddenly revels look a lot more crowded.
But any time I’ve tried to engage anyone in conversation about how traveling to the Otherworld works, I’ve been met with a stone wall.
Thoughts of the Otherworld consume me. If I can just figure out how it all works, I could go there, get Emmett and Lydia back,
and then, maybe, find a way to shove Bram and his awful companions back through the door and bolt it behind them.
The one person who has ever spoken with me about the door to the Otherworld was Bram’s mother, Queen Mor. The last time I
saw her was on my wedding night, when her son had her imprisoned in the Tower of London. I went back to visit her again a
few weeks later.
It was an ordeal, sneaking out of Kensington Palace through the tunnel system Emmett once taught me, crossing town in disguise,
bribing a yeoman guard to let me inside the ancient prison on the bank of the Thames.