Prince Emmett De Vere
It’s hours later when I appear at the threshold to Lydia’s room. She’s used to my late-night visits by now, as I am to her
unusual waking hours.
She opens the door after only two knocks, clad, as she usually is, in a nightdress with her hair wound up in a knot on top
of her head, a few curls escaping around her face.
She waves the paintbrush she has in one hand at me. “Come in, you.”
I plop down into the worn armchair by her fire and wonder how many hours, days, months I’ve spent in this exact spot.
I’ve never been able to think of the Otherworld as my home, but this corner in Lydia’s room comes very close.
Lydia returns to her canvas, sparing a glance at me behind her.
“You look awful,” she says.
“Thanks, Lyd.”
“You need sleep.”
“So do you,” I shoot back.
“Where is Ivy?” she asks, ignoring my jab. “She did come to see you, didn’t she?”
“Was the water your idea?” I ask.
She fights a smile. “You’re too stubborn for your own good. I knew you just needed a push.”
I roll my eyes, but she’s too focused on her landscape-in-progress to notice. She flicks her paintbrush, and a smear of yellow
starts to become a field of flowers.
“Where is she now?” Lydia asks again, perpetually the older sister.
“In bed,” I say flatly.
Ivy banged on my door for what felt like ages after I slammed it in her face. When the pounding slowed to nothing I peered
into the hallway and found her asleep at my threshold, splayed out like a doll.
I cursed under my breath, sure the castle staff had given her a sleeping draught. I don’t want her tangled up in all the substances
so readily available here.
I scooped her up and carried her back to her room. She flinched awake as I opened her door and blinked up at me with her big
brown eyes.
“Emmett?” She sighed my name.
“Shh,” I soothed her. “I’m just putting you in bed.”
“Stay with me,” she croaked, voice small.
I looked down at her in my arms and wanted nothing more than to slide into bed with her, wrap my arms around her, and never
move again.
I tucked her under the quilt and watched as her blond curls fell in a cascade over her pillow.
Every part of me ached, like a fire had been lit inside of my chest and was spreading through my bloodstream until even the
tips of my fingers were in pain.
Ivy fought hard to keep her eyes open, but even her strong will was no match against a faerie sleeping draught.
“Sweetheart,” I said so low I hoped she couldn’t hear me. Here she was, my girl, not dead, but alive and here—and I still couldn’t have her. The pain of the dungeons was nothing compared to this.
I tucked the blankets up under her chin and plaited her hair into a loose braid so it wouldn’t tangle in her sleep. Lydia
taught me how to braid a long time ago, on a rainy afternoon when we had nothing to do but be together.
I allowed myself a moment of weakness in Ivy’s doorway, where I stood for much too long watching the gentle rise and fall
of her chest.
Then I walked to Lydia’s room.
“You have to tell her,” Lydia says now. “You owe her that much.”
“I don’t see the point. It’ll just hurt her further,” I reply. I don’t know how to make her understand that I’ve become of this place, transformed. I may look well on the outside, but the veneer hides a rotting, foul center, like a piece of faerie
fruit.
“So what’s your plan, then?” Lydia asks, voice drenched with sarcasm.
“We’ll do what we need to do with Bram, Ivy will move back to England, and she’ll move on with someone more suitable than
me. She was never going to be mine. I’ve known that since the beginning.”
“And you and I?” Lydia asks quietly.
“We’ll do what we’ve always done,” I answer. Survive.
“If you think she’s going to move on, you don’t know my sister as well as you think. She won’t just let this go.”
I shrug. It’s not often we disagree, but Ivy was willing to leave me for Bram even before all of this. Lydia has it all wrong.
“You have to tell her,” Lydia says once more.
“I can’t.”
Lydia whips around to face me, her hands covered in thick oil paint. “She’s in agony!”
“She can join the club!” I hate myself immediately for shouting at Lydia. She’s always been my tether to the better parts
of me, and I need her now, even as I long to push her away.
She flinches and I cross the room to her and wrap her in a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I mutter softly.
Lydia lays her head on my chest, but she’s breathing against me like she might cry. I know every hitch of her breath by now.
“I’m getting paint all over your shirt,” she says.
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll help you tell her. We can do it together,” Lydia says gently.
I pull away from her. “Give me time.”
Lydia chews on the inside of her cheek, looking so much like Ivy as she considers me. “I’m just not sure how much we have.”
There’s a heavy stretch of silence and I know Lydia is waiting to say something else. I flop back into my well-worn chair
and wait for it. She finishes the shading on a cloud and then asks, “You really thought she was dead?”
I don’t like to think of my first few months here, but the memories rush back to me in a torrent I’m powerless against.
I spent two months in the dungeons of the castle, locked in a damp cell, slowly starving to death, going mad with worry for
Ivy and with grief for my father.
I attempted escape three more times after my disastrous first effort, but each time was unsuccessful and left me beaten to a bloody pulp. My left hand still can’t make a fist after all the bones in it were shattered by a particularly enthusiastic guard.
I was lying on the stone ground, staring at the ceiling, when I heard Bram coming. After years of living in each other’s pockets,
I recognized him by only his steps.
I rolled over and followed the line of his shiny boots, visible under the bars of the cell, up to his face. He wasn’t sneering.
He was looking at me like he might be sorry for me.
Even after everything, I still felt a pang of love for him, like the clang of a bell in a church that burned down long ago.
“Have you come to mock me?” I asked.
“I’ve come to talk,” he replied.
I pushed myself up to a sitting position and leaned against the far wall of my cell. Between the shadows and my too-long hair,
Bram was less likely to see any of my reactions. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“Talk, then,” I said.
“Ivy is dead.”
I gasped like I’d been hit, unable to stop myself. “No,” I muttered to myself. “She can’t be.” Wouldn’t I be able to feel
it somehow? That very first night we met in the carriage, when she was out hunting for Lydia, she told me she’d be able to
feel it if her sister was gone. I understood exactly what she meant. Even worlds apart, I cannot imagine I could go on living
unaffected if Ivy Benton’s heart stopped beating. Wouldn’t something be fundamentally damaged within me? I should have been
able to feel it like a broken bone.
But then—so many of my bones were already broken. Maybe I couldn’t distinguish it from the pain I was already in.
“The night of our wedding,” Bram went on. “After my mother’s bargains were broken, there was a riot at the palace.”
“The guards couldn’t stop it?” I’d been worried about something like that happening, but had enough faith in the palace guards
to keep us safe. I was willfully naive about a lot of things. I know that now.
“No. The gates were breached, and Ivy was killed in the chaos. I found her trampled body near the orangery. I think she must
have been looking for you. I’m sorry to deliver this news, it brings me no pleasure.”
“I don’t believe you.” The words were strangled.
Bram reached into the pocket of his coat and fished out a small object. He tossed it and it landed at my feet. In the low
light of the cell, it took me a moment to recognize it.
I scrambled back in horror.
Lying in the dirt was a human finger wearing Ivy’s engagement ring.
“I was fond of her, too,” Bram said.
“Were you?” I asked, aghast, the devastation making my eyes blurry.
“I was,” he answered, his voice a shade quieter.
“Get it away from me.”
He lowered himself to the floor so he was sitting in front of my cell. He looked so odd sitting there in his fine silk jacket,
a crown on his head. With surprising tenderness, he reached for the finger and tucked it back in his cloak.
All I could picture was her body, the same body I’d held and worshipped, bruised and broken against the grass. Had she suffered?
She must have. It would have been a horrible way to die.
I leaned over and retched into the corner of my cell.
Bram just watched as I sobbed and heaved until there was nothing left in my empty stomach to come up but burning bile.
“Is this fun for you? Are you having fun?” I looked up at him through the damp strands of my hair.
Bram watched me like a parent watches an unruly child throwing a tantrum. “Are you quite finished?”
“Finished mourning Ivy? How dare you.”
“I’ve got business to attend to. Would you rather me leave you down here?” he answered in a bored voice.
“Is there another option?”
“I have a bit of a problem I need your assistance with.”
“My assistance?”
“Now that I’m king of both England and the Otherworld, I’m finding myself stretched rather thin. Previously, while I was away,
my most trusted advisers acted as regent in my stead, but now they’re all in England with me.”
My blood turns to ice, thinking of more fae like Bram running wild over my beloved homeland. England isn’t perfect, but they
don’t deserve this.
“I need someone here, a regent to do my bidding while I’m away.”
“And you want me to act as their personal punching bag?” I half joked.
“I want you to be my regent.”
I sat up straighter, wary of a trick. “Me?”
“Despite the incident with Ivy, you really did have my best interest at heart. It was your plot all along to see me on the
throne, and now you’ve done it.”
He was right. In an awful sort of way.
“We were brothers, once upon a time,” he went on. “Are you ready to throw all of that away for some dead mortal girl?”
Yes. But I was of no use to Ivy down here. I couldn’t avenge her if I was locked away in the dark. I wouldn’t last much longer.
If I wanted to get out, this was my chance.
“There are always other girls.” I choked out the words, false and bitter. “But I’ve only ever had one brother.”
“That’s what I hoped you would say.” Bram grinned, and for a moment he looked so much like the boy I once knew it was heart-wrenching.
“I think you’ve been punished enough for the Ivy-of-it-all. You’ve been down here for, what, a week?”
I glanced to the tick marks I’d carved into the stone wall with one of my cuff links. “Two months.”
“Whoops.” Bram pushed himself up off the floor. “Dinner tonight?”
“I’d be honored,” I lied. It didn’t seem much of a choice.
He disappeared out of the shadowy dungeon, and a guard came to free me from my cell a few minutes later. I was taken to my
new rooms, washed and scrubbed and bathed. The giggling faerie maid smeared all sorts of foul-smelling potions on me to remove
any trace of my imprisonment. But there are some scars that even magic can’t heal; the damage is set too deep.
I was shocked when I saw Lydia at Bram’s side that night in the dining room. For one heartbeat, I thought I was looking at
Ivy again, before the light shifted and I recognized her sister. It was the night that everything changed for me.
At first, I was confused by Bram’s trust in me, but I’ve learned in the years since he has a sick kind of possessiveness over me.
It’s genuinely never occurred to him that I could love anyone more than I love him.
He wasn’t on the lookout for any betrayal larger than a fight over a girl because he’s always thought I believed in him as a leader, as my leader.
I should be grateful for Bram’s ego; it’s the only reason I left that prison cell alive.
I blink back to Lydia’s room and glance at the shimmering fire in her grate.
“Why did you think Ivy was dead?” she asks me gently.
“Bram told me she was, the day he freed me from prison. He showed me a severed finger, but Ivy doesn’t seem to be missing
any, so I suppose it must have been a glamour.”
“Oh,” she says sadly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, watching the flames dance against the charred wood. “I didn’t see any use in shattering
your heart too. I was trying to protect you, I guess.”
She walks toward me and tips my chin up with the handle of her paintbrush. “You could have told me. I want you to tell me
everything. That’s what best friends do, Em.”
I reach over and wrap my pinkie finger around hers. She said it was something she used to do with Ivy when they were children,
but it’s somehow become our thing. “Best friends, Lyd.”
She looks placated.
I leave Lydia’s warm fire and climb the dark stairs up to the next floor where my and Ivy’s bedrooms are located. It still
feels so unreal that she’s in the castle. I hate it. I’m terrified for her and I was barely functioning as it was. I’m a wreck
over her; I always have been.
In an awful way, it was easier when I thought she was dead, because at least I knew nothing further could harm her.
The hallway is shadowy and silent; no one stays up here but me, usually. But in a castle like this, there is no real security to be had.
I walk halfway down the hall, strip out of my paint-smeared shirt, and ball it up to use as a pillow. Then I lie down in front
of Ivy’s door and sleep.