Chapter Ten
I begin to sob. It starts as big heaving breaths, but then they get stuck in my throat and I can’t breathe as the tears fall.
Lydia wraps me tightly in her arms. “You believe it’s me, then?”
She pauses and takes one long look at me. “If you are a selkie, you’re doing quite a good impression of my little sister.
I’ll keep you around.”
I laugh weakly. “You vomited on the table at Lady Trummer’s autumn equinox tea when you were thirteen. You didn’t tell Mama
you weren’t feeling well because you didn’t want to miss the party.”
Lydia presses her lips together.
“It was your most embarrassing moment. You never would have told Bram about it.”
“You don’t need to go on. I already believed it was you.”
“You did?” I ask hopefully.
She nods. “No one else could look that shattered gazing at Emmett. There’s not a selkie alive who is that talented an actress.”
“I don’t know what to say to convince him.” I look down at my hands. This is nothing like how I imagined this going.
“He’ll get there in his own time. Emmett is stubborn. He’s afraid of getting hurt again. What he’s gone through here . . .” She trails off.
“What has he gone through?” I ask, dread coiling around me.
Lydia averts her gaze. “It’s not my story to tell.”
As if to change the subject, she takes my arm in hers. “Come along, we’ll have a room prepared for you.”
The tug I feel toward Emmett is ever present. “I need to speak to him, make him understand—”
“Give him time,” Lydia says.
“Time isn’t on our side. Won’t Bram come looking for me here? He’ll notice I’m gone soon enough.” In the plans I made with
our little rebellion group, I pictured finding Lydia in the castle, freeing Emmett from prison, and fleeing with them, hiding
somewhere for a few days until Rhion tricked Bram into reopening the portal and returning to England. I have flint and steel
tucked in a pouch down my corset to make a fire in the woods. Never did I imagine I’d be welcomed into the castle as a guest.
Lydia’s beautiful face is calm. “Hours in London are equal to days here. We have a while before he comes.”
“I left in the night. He’ll sleep through the afternoon.”
Lydia nods. “That’s good. We have two or three days then, at least. Long enough to come up with a plan.”
“We can go to the woods. Rhion will open the portal as soon as he’s able—” The words race out of me; I need Lydia to understand
how dire this is.
“Rhion?” she asks, confused.
“He’s helping us.”
Her brows narrow. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
My stomach twists.
She smiles serenely. “We can discuss this in the morning.”
I feel like I’m sleepwalking as I follow her up the central staircase of the castle. Like in Kensington, there is a massive
tree growing up through the center. The tops of its leaves brush the domed, stained glass ceiling. Moonlight filters through
the great hall in a pastel mosaic of colors. The sun has gone down fast.
Lydia leads me to a room on the fourth floor, a quiet corridor that seems to house rooms for guests.
She stops at a periwinkle door and turns the cut crystal handle. We step inside and she trails a gentle hand along the silk
bed linens.
“I hope you’ll find the room to your liking,” she says like the perfect hostess.
The room is nothing like Kensington Palace. There is no dark mahogany, polished brass, or thick carpeting with geometric patterns.
One wall is made up entirely of windows that look out on the countryside, with its changing autumn leaves. The bed is white
marble, with four posts that reach up to the ceiling. The vanity is mirrored glass, even the drawers, which reflect speckles
of starlight around the room.
“Don’t do that,” I say to my sister, suddenly exhausted. It’s been more than a day since I last slept.
“Do what?” she asks innocently.
“Act like you’re some prim and proper wife welcoming me to a weekend at your country estate.”
I expect Lydia to laugh but she hesitates. “This is my home. I am queen of the Otherworld.”
“Yes,” I laugh, “but, like, not really.”
Her brows furrow and I know, in that way sisters do, that we’re about to have a fight.
“I’ve ruled this kingdom for years while Bram plays with you in England,” she says harshly.
“Plays with me? He’s tortured me! Every thought I’ve had these past four months has been for you and Emmett and your safety.”
“Yes, exactly. Four months. You have no idea what it is to rule a kingdom.”
I stare my sister down, the heat of anger rising in my chest. “I’ve been holding England together with my bare, bloody hands!
Every morning we wake to new bodies in the streets. The government is barely functioning. I’ve had to learn tax codes, agricultural
practices, social services—” I list them off on my fingers. “All the while hosting infernal luncheons for titled ladies because
that is what is expected of me.”
Lydia reaches up and brushes her eye, leaving a smear of glitter across her cheekbone. The sight of it should infuriate me
more, but instead it punctures me completely.
“I’ve had to be his tariffs and tea party queen. You got to be his magic queen.” My voice cracks.
She puts her hands on her hips just like she used to when she chastised me for acting like a baby. “This is just like when
we were children. You think it’s been easy for me ruling the Otherworld as a mortal? I’ve had to fight for every crumb of
respect I have here.”
“It’s not fair!” I can’t help but yell. “I was the one who believed in magic.”
This place is foreign, but this feeling is not. I am well acquainted with the emotion of looking at Lydia and wanting to be
her—and then hating her for it.
Envy settles in my stomach sourly.
“Did you come here to fight with me?” Lydia frowns.
“I came here to save you.”
I expect her to say something petulant like I don’t need saving, but she pauses. It’s as if she really looks at me for the first time. Then she starts to laugh. “You’re the queen of England,”
she says in disbelief.
“I—I am the queen of England,” I sputter, but then I start to laugh too and soon we’re both hunched over, wiping tears from
our eyes. It’s all so absurd.
I cross the room and pull her into a hug. It’s awkward with our heavily beaded sleeves and Lydia’s sharp crown, but it’s a
relief nonetheless. “I missed you,” I mutter into her unbound hair. “I’m just glad you’re all right.”
I feel her sigh. “I missed you too.”
I pull back and look into her eyes, so like mine. “Do you love him?”
“Which one?” she asks, horribly. It’s the worst possible response.
“I meant Bram, but either . . . both?”
“I loved who I believed Bram to be.”
I don’t want to ask the next question, but I have to. “And Emmett?”
She pauses, searching for the right words, her face so full of tender fondness, it makes me ache. “He’s my best friend.”
“That’s all?”
“For two years, we are all the other has had. He’s the only person I could be honest with, and him with me. What we’ve had
to do to survive here . . .” She trails off uncomfortably.
The sadness in her voice makes me want to cry.
“I love him so much, Lydia. I’m afraid he no longer loves me back.”
She places both hands on my shoulders. “I’d been here three months before I saw Emmett.
He’d spent all his time before that below my feet in the dungeons, though I was ignorant to his presence in the Otherworld.
He strode into the dining room, rail thin, bruises under both eyes, and you know what the first words out of his mouth were? ”
“What?” I ask quietly.
“He said your name. Whispered it like a prayer is a more accurate description.”
“Why would he do that?”
Lydia smiles sadly. “He thought I was you. It’s a very large room and I was rather far away. No one who says your name like
that could have forgotten you. You’re rather hard to forget, I think.”
I look to the floor, unconvinced. “Thank you.”
She takes a step back and looks me up and down. “I’ll send Eloree, my lady’s maid, in to ready you for bed. You can trust
her, but no one else. In the morning, we will plan, but you need your rest.”
I nod, too exhausted to protest.
Lydia walks out the door and moments later a lithe faerie girl with sunset-colored hair that falls to the backs of her knees
strides into the room.
She sprays my hair with a fine mist of oil that smells like rose petals after rain and looks at me with her overlarge eyes
through the mirror.
“You look so like your sister,” she says in a soft, high voice.
“We get that a lot. She’s prettier, though,” I answer.
“She is,” Eloree says without hesitation. I don’t know if her bluntness is a characteristic of the Others or if it’s just
her, but I find it endearing.
I raise my arms and she slips a nightdress the same blue as the light on the ocean, constructed of a floaty silk, over my head. She then passes me a wax-stoppered bottle with a light blue liquid inside, shimmering like the Milky Way.
I look up at her questioningly.
“A sleeping draught,” she explains, and before I can protest, she unstoppers the bottle and tips it between my lips.
The draught tastes like a cold winter wind and I cough, trying not to swallow it, but it slides down my throat like oil.
I swat her hand away. “Don’t do that,” I sputter between body-racking coughs.
She looks at me with her uncanny, overlarge eyes. “Oh, most of us at court take them. The revels go on for so long.”
“Well, I don’t want one again.”
She shrugs, as if confused by my reaction, then exits the room.
She shuts the door behind her with a gentle click and I lay my head on the pillow and try to swallow away the strange flavor of the draught. I hope I haven’t just been poisoned.
It would be embarrassing to make it all this way and be taken out by a lady’s maid.
I’ve only been in bed for a moment when I’m startled by a frantic pounding on the door.
I grab a heavy golden candlestick from my bedside table and raise it above my head like a weapon.
What if Lydia was wrong and Bram’s already found me here? I thought he’d taken all his most loyal advisers to England with
him, but what if some remain in the Otherworld, and they’re here to exact revenge on his behalf?
The pounding continues. “Who is there?” I call.
“It’s me,” Lydia’s voice calls from the other side of the door. “Open up, I have an idea.”
“How do I know it’s you?” I ask cautiously. Emmett was so convinced I was a selkie, perhaps shape-shifting is commonplace here.
“You hid Mr. Froburg’s brussels sprouts under your bed when you were seven because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but
then your room smelled so terribly of rotting brussels sprouts Mama almost fired our maid.”
I crack open the door. “I should have thrown them in the fire.”
Lydia cracks a smile. “With age comes wisdom.”
She’s in a nightdress similar to mine, an intricate lace dressing gown pulled over it. With a dramatic flourish, she gestures
to the object at her feet.
“A bucket of water?” I ask. “I can’t stink that badly.”
“No, stupid.” She rolls her eyes. “I just had the most brilliant idea. Selkies. They return to their true form in water.”
It’s vaguely familiar to me; there was a story about a selkie in Mrs. Osbourne’s old faerie book. Once upon a time, I had
every page memorized.
“Of course!” I shout, and haul the water from the floor. It splashes all over my hem.
“Which room is his?” I ask excitedly.
“Door at the very end of the hall,” she says. “Good luck!”
But I only half hear her. I’m already racing down the corridor.
I drop the bucket at my feet and pound both fists on his sunrise-orange door.
From inside, I hear him stir, but the doorknob doesn’t turn.
“Please, one second, that’s all I ask,” I beg through the wall.
“Go away,” he answers miserably.
I pound until the doorframe shakes. “There is nothing you can say to make me leave. Crack the door. It’s all I need. If this doesn’t convince you, I’ll leave you alone forever.” I absolutely won’t leave him alone forever, but I’d say anything to get him to open this door.
For a moment there is only silence, and I fear he means to leave me out here all night, rapping until my knuckles are bloody.
“Please,” I beg so quietly he probably cannot hear me. My arms burn with effort and my fists throb.
Footsteps sound from behind the door.
Reluctantly, it creaks open a sliver.
“I don’t know who sent you, but please let them know I have been tortured thoroughly enough.” Emmett looks and sounds exhausted
down to his bones.
The kohl from the revel has been washed from his eyes, revealing the bruise-like circles beneath them.
He takes a sharp breath at the sight of me like he’s in pain.
I want to say something cutting like, At least try to look happy to see me, but I can’t risk him slamming the door in my face.
In one fluid movement, I pick the bucket up and dump it on my head.
Emmett gives an abbreviated little breath. His eyes rake down my body to all the places my silk nightdress now sticks to every
curve of me.
Then he wraps me in his arms, and he’s kissing me.
His lips collide with mine with bruising pressure. His tongue slides into the gap between my teeth and he holds me against
his body so tightly, I don’t think there is a single space where we are not touching.
The exquisite relief mixed with scorching desire is the single best sensation I’ve ever felt.
It’s like I’ve been aching with thirst for months and I’m suddenly being swept out to sea.
He winds his arm around the back of my head and tucks me into the crook of his elbow, tipping me back until we’re both stumbling.
He lifts me up and I wrap my legs around his waist as my head hits the plaster wall behind me, but I can’t bring myself to
care.
I’m pinned now between Emmett and the wall, and I savor the heat of him, the hard planes of his body moving against mine.
He moans into my open mouth and all I can do is take it, feel it, feel him everywhere.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, Emmett lowers me to the floor and wrenches himself away from me.
He’s as soaked through as I am now. His white shirt sticks translucently to his chest and his hair is plastered to his forehead.
He’s breathing hard, looking at me wretchedly.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I can’t do this.” Then he disappears into his room and slams the door behind him.