Chapter Three #3
always confined to her room. Marion and Faith, having lost the competition for Bram’s hand, can never marry. Queen Mor’s magical
bargain with us has been broken, but Bram is eager to uphold it anyway. It seems it’s the only one of his mother’s bargains
he agreed to keep. The day after our wedding, Emmy, Marion, Faith, and Olive were each delivered notes in Bram’s hand that
said simply, The terms remain.
It suits Faith and Marion perfectly fine. It’s Olive and Emmy I worry about.
Marion and Faith’s butler answers the door, and I show myself into the drawing room. I know the way well enough by now. From there, I exit through the back door and cut through the damp garden to the cellar.
“You’re late,” Faith scolds as I swing the crumbling wooden door open.
I swat away a spiderweb. “I’m your queen,” I shoot back, then glance at the watch pinned to my waist. “I’m also exactly on
time. It’s not my fault you’re chronically early.”
Marion pats Faith’s leg. “I happen to like your timeliness, darling.”
The cellar is dim and dark, lit with beeswax candles set atop dusty milk crates we’re using for tables.
The first few times we met, it was just me, Faith, Marion, Emmy, and Olive, so we gathered in the drawing room. Then our little
group grew. Now we have Marion’s sister, Este; Lottie; Ben, an assistant cook in my employ; and, shock of all shocks, Eduart,
a 410-year-old former banner knight who fought in the War of the Roses and bargained with Mor to become immortal.
When her bargains were broken and the rest of her immortal footmen turned to ash, Eduart remained standing. He didn’t even
know what had happened until about a month ago. News was slow to reach his hamlet in Hampshire. He also didn’t have any friends,
as his bargain with Mor had made him absolutely repulsive to others.
He ended up on my doorstep at Kensington Palace asking to see Emmett’s now-dead father, Edgar. I took him to Marion’s for
safekeeping and explained the whole sorry story on the way.
With these numbers, our ragtag group of rebels can hardly gather in Marion and Faith’s drawing room, in full view of prying
eyes, so we meet here, in the cellar tucked away in the back of their garden.
“I’m aging.” Eduart sticks his hand dangerously close to the flickering flame of the candle.
“That’s dirt.” Olive peers down at his hand.
“A freckle,” Eduart argues.
Olive reaches down and tries to smudge it with her thumb. “Fine, a freckle,” she concedes. “What does it mean?”
“It means after four hundred years on this rainy rock, I’m finally on my way out!”
We’ve spoken at length as to why Eduart didn’t crumble to dust when Mor’s bargains were broken. The bargains with her doomed
footmen must have had different wording, bound them to her in some way she didn’t do with Eduart. We know her bargains got
more specific as the years passed.
It seems for Eduart, the clock of his mortality has simply started ticking again.
“That’s wonderful, Eduart!” I’m genuinely happy for him. “Though I am sorry you’re stuck with us for at least thirty more
years.”
“A mere blink of an eye,” he says with a cheerful smile.
I glance at Olive next to him. She’s in the same gray cloak Rhion described. “Have you been meeting without me?” I ask the
table.
Their faces are startled. “No,” Olive answers for the group.
“I would understand. I know my schedule can be difficult.” I try to sound kind, unsuspicious. Rhion is just playing with me
like he plays with those girls draped at his feet. I’d be silly to believe anything he says. I long for the days when I believed
the Others could not lie.
“I swear it, we have not met without you. Why do you ask?” Olive says.
“Rhion says he saw you in disguise, running all around town.”
Olive’s face blanches and it makes my stomach sink. “When was this? I often go to the kitchens with Ben to try new recipes.”
“Every day at eleven a.m.,” I answer. Perhaps it’s unwise to lay all my cards on the table like this, but I trust Olive. It
would feel like losing to let Rhion take that from me.
Olive’s gaze falls to her lap. “Is he trying to sow discord? You know how they are.”
An uncomfortable glance flits between Faith and Marion. I’m envious of the way they can communicate with nothing but a look.
Could Emmett and I do that? I don’t even remember now.
I lay my hand atop Olive’s. “Of course. I didn’t mean to accuse. I’m just so on edge these days.”
Olive gives me a sidelong glance and pouts. “Sometimes I think you never forgave me for that stunt with the bracelet.”
“Of course we forgave you!” I reply.
Olive’s eyes well up with fat tears and Ben springs into motion, tripping over himself to pass her a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” I say genuinely. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Olive is a hothouse flower, and in upsetting her I feel like
I’ve let Rhion win.
“Can we please move on from this?” Faith sighs.
We spend the rest of our meeting talking through Rhion’s strange riddles (verdict: useless), Mor’s possible whereabouts (verdict:
she could be back in the Otherworld by now), and ways to find the door between worlds (verdict: no one knows, and now that
the Aurelia Vallen lead is dead we must start anew).
I return home feeling restless and unsettled. I whittle away the rest of the day in the manner to which I have become accustomed: desperately lonely and sick with fear.
Pig curls up in my lap as I sit at my desk by the window and work on my correspondence. I start with the business notes needed
after today’s meetings: the railway, the market town’s food supply, a pending issue with a London hospital. When they are
done, I smooth out a fresh piece of parchment and begin a letter to Lydia, as I do nearly every night. I know it’s silly,
but it makes her feel less far away.
It was another gray day here. I swear I can smell the sea on the wind. I miss London desperately, but am told we will stay
in Bath through February. There’s a shop in town that bakes the most fantastic buns. I wish I could share one with you.
Your devoted sister,
Ivy
I close my eyes and try to picture my sister in the Otherworld. When we were little girls, we imagined it having fields of
golden flowers and horses with wings. We’d jump around our garden pretending we were flying through the air on their backs.
I miss my sister. I’m nauseous with worry for her. But in these moments, when it’s just me and my thoughts, another emotion
creeps in, sour in the back of my throat—jealousy.
Next, I write a letter back to Ethel, my father’s cousin, a woman in her mid-eighties who lives up north. We’ve been corresponding
since I was a faerie-obsessed child. She was an eccentric adult who took me seriously, which felt like a lifeline at thirteen.
While I’m distinctly less enamored with the Others these days, she is still a beloved friend. She’s written me about her pumpkin crop. She thinks she’s likely to win the county fair this year with the biggest one her garden has ever produced.
I’m so proud! I write back next to a little drawing of an enormous pumpkin and a tiny Ethel beside it in her spectacles.
I save my letter to Emmett for last. Today has left me wrung out and exhausted, so I keep the message simple.
I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry.
I toss the letters to him and Lydia in the fire and watch silently as they curl into ash. Then I blow out the candle at my
bedside and fall into a fitful sleep.
I am awoken at dawn to Bram’s nose nudging the bare bit of my shoulder where my nightdress has slipped.
“Tell me again,” he whispers in the dark, “the story of the faerie king.”