Chapter Fifteen
The lawn is dusted with frost like icing sugar that crunches beneath my feet and sparkles under the stark morning sun. Faeries
usually sleep well past midday, so it’s only me in the gardens this morning.
My fur-lined ice-blue cloak hangs heavy on my shoulders. I pull it tighter, fighting the wind that whips between hedges.
Emmett emerges from the mist like a vision. Golden sun reflects off his dark hair and the chill has turned his cheeks rosy.
He’s wearing a thick brown overcoat, similar to something he would have worn in London, but this one has metallic vines embroidered
up the sleeves.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he says.
“I’ve always come when you’ve asked.”
I feel the fresh wound of our fight yesterday. I don’t know how to act natural around him. We both said we’re sorry, but I’m
not sure how to go about healing. I’m terrified we’re both too wounded to ever overcome what we’ve gone through and go back
to the people we used to be. I long for the simple pleasure of bickering, toe-to-toe in a boathouse.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Emmett smiles softly, like he’s afraid I might spook. “To meet some friends of mine.”
The walk takes us from the castle grounds through the hillside village and down into the glen where a few homes and businesses
are scattered. Emmett talks blandly about the landmarks we pass. “This is the night market, it runs nearly every day after
dark, except when the vendors forget,” he says as we pass the empty stalls on the winding streets surrounding the castle.
He explains that faerie magic can’t make something from nothing, but it can expand and transform. So unlike in England, where
so much of our land and time is dedicated simply to the task of feeding the populace, the Otherworld has no real need for
organized agriculture or farmland. A single berry is as good as a million berries. If you have enough food for one, you can
simply wave your hand and have a feast for one thousand. A lack of agriculture means an economy never had a need to develop.
Those who do work, like the castle staff, are paid in the only finite resource in the Otherworld—land of their own. They earn
mere inches a month. It can take a faerie centuries to earn a plot big enough to live on. The lords and other landed families
are the lucky ones.
“The population of the Otherworld isn’t focused on survival, only entertainment. It’s why they’re so obsessed with humanity.
It’s not just the way we make them feel, though that’s a big part of it, it’s that we’re the model they have for society,”
Emmett says. I nod along as Emmett explains all of this, interested, but also concerned about all I’m missing back in England.
I was supposed to talk with my advisers this week about building a hospital in the East End. They won’t have access to the
Crown’s funding without me there to approve it.
“They call it Little Londinium,” Emmett explains as we pass through the town square. “Most things here are a copy of something they saw in England, but the door was closed back in the 1400s, so it’s turned into a bit of an off-kilter time capsule.”
That explains the buildings, with their white plaster and dark wood, the strange fashion, and the odd way the Others sometimes
speak.
“Some haven’t been back to England since the Romans ruled. You’ll sometimes see faeries wearing togas or poorly copied bronze
armor. Some are nostalgic for the Middle Ages and still stage jousting matches.”
He points out more businesses as we go: a dress shop where the seamstress insists on being paid in sugar; a tailor that went
out of business after the proprietor made a bad bargain and was forced to speak only in limericks; a tavern that serves exclusively
fermented fruit pies.
After walking for thirty or so minutes, the buildings thin and we reach the outskirts of Little Londinium.
We come upon a storybook cottage. It’s got a thatched roof and a chimney gently puffing smoke into the clear morning sky.
Emmett opens the gate in the knee-high fence and gestures for me to go through. “Ladies first.”
I’m hit with a blast of heat the moment I step inside the building, which I realize isn’t a home but a tavern.
“Uncle Emmett!” In a blur, two figures dart from the kitchen and throw themselves at Emmett.
He scoops the smaller of the two up off the well-worn wooden floor and tosses him high in the air. The boy’s giggle pierces
the room. The little girl at his ankles screams, “Me next, me next!”
The smell of pastries baking is nearly overwhelming. At this time of the morning, the small pub is empty, filled only with dust-flecked beams of light spilling from the rafters above. There are a dozen or so long tables and a stage in the corner with a few instruments propped up.
Emmett sets the little boy down and picks up the girl, who squeals with glee. The boy puts his chubby hands on his hips and
looks up at me suspiciously. “You look like Queen Lydia, but you’re not Queen Lydia.”
“I’m her sister.”
He gestures to the girl being swung around by Emmett. “That’s my sister. She steals all my sweets and never goes to sleep
when Mama and Papa tell her to.”
I bend down and lower my voice. “Lydia was very good at listening to our parents. I was the naughty one.”
The boy nods sagely. “Uncle Emmett says Queen Lydia is very, very good.”
I’ve never seen a faerie child before. The boy looks no older than five, with big brown eyes and a mop of curly hair. His
sister looks to be about seven, with spindly legs, her hair in two braids, the same fawn color as her brother’s.
Emmett sets the girl down, out of breath and laughing. “Uncle Emmett?” I ask in a whisper.
“No blood relation, obviously. I just spend a lot of time here.”
From behind the bar, a woman waves a towel. “Sit, eat!” she commands; then she pauses and her big brown eyes go wide. “Who’s
your friend?”
Emmett glances to me, then back to the woman. “Nan, this is Ivy Benton.”
I turn and the woman gasps. Her eyes fill with tears, and then she rushes from behind the bar and wraps me in a bone-crushing hug.
“But she’s—” she sputters, then leans back and grabs my face with both of her hands. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint?”
“Disappoint?” she gasps. “This is the best news I’ve heard in nearly a century!”
She releases me, then wraps Emmett up in a similarly tight embrace. “My darling boy,” she sniffles. “I’m so happy for you.”
Emmett’s eyes well with tears, too, but he blinks them away rapidly and runs a hand through his dark hair.
The woman gestures to one of the empty tables and brings over a pot of tea and four cups. “I want to hear the whole story.
Fennick!” she bellows. “Come quick!”
A startled-looked ginger-haired man appears in the doorway to the kitchen. He wipes his hands on his apron. “What is it now,
dear? Oh! Emmett’s here! How lovely to see you.”
“Ivy’s here!” Nan shouts.
The man, Fennick, shakes his head. “No, dear, she’s dead.”
I raise my hand awkwardly. “Alive, actually. Hello.”
“She’s alive!” Nan pops up behind my shoulder and echoes with glee.
Soon the four of us have steaming teacups in front of us and the children (whose names I learn are Orin and Veda) are sent
to play in the garden.
Like all faeries, Fennick and Nan don’t look any older than their early twenties, but there’s a parental air about them. Maybe
it’s the crinkles by Nan’s warm brown eyes or the gentle way Fennick holds his hands in his lap.
“Tell us the whole story, dear,” Nan says. I take a sip of tea and begin with the night of my wedding to Bram, though I suspect she knows that part already.
“After Bram had Emmett taken away, I went with the other girls to the Tower to confront Queen Mor.”
“Bram told me you were trampled in the chaos,” Emmett says, his voice thin with pain.
I want to reach out to him, but I don’t know if he’d accept my touch. How do I comfort him over my own death? How do I make
him feel better about something that was never even true?
“I am well,” I say, but of course I’m not.
I continue my story, telling them about how the court moved down to Bath, how we found Queen Mor in the Roman ruins, how I’m
doing my best to keep the country functioning as Bram’s chaos reigns.
“Our Emmett is the same way,” Nan says affectionately.
“I was going to ask how you all got to know each other,” I say.
“Emmett has been such a help to us townsfolk,” Fennick replies. “We wouldn’t have a tavern at all if it wasn’t for him.”
“They’re being too generous,” Emmett says. “I came at first only because I was recently released from prison and looking for
a place to get completely obliterated.”
“The kids started screaming the moment he walked in,” says Nan.
“I looked like a skeleton after all those months in prison.”
“No,” Fennick corrects him. “They’d just never seen a human before.”
“So he sits down at the bar”—Nan leans toward me—“and he orders pint after pint, and it was only after three that he answered
any of my questions. I thought he was pulling my leg at first, but I’ve since learned that Emmett doesn’t like to lie.”
I turn toward him, curious. “That’s new.” The Emmett I knew was quite a proficient liar.
He looks toward the ground and shrugs. “Lying has never gotten me anywhere I wanted to be.”
“I asked him how he’d come to be in the Otherworld. I hadn’t seen a human since Queen Mor locked the door between our worlds
and King Bram took over. I wasn’t prepared for a love story.”
“A love story?” I ask.
Nan captures my hand in hers. “He told us all about you.”
Emmett’s eyes catch mine. There’s that spark of fire in those hazel irises I’d been missing. “She’s being dramatic.”
Nan swats him. “I am not! The way he described you, oh, my dear girl, I wish you’d been there to hear it.”
“What was it?” Fennick taps the side of his face. “Much too brave and smart to also deserve a face that beautiful.”
If I didn’t know Emmett better, I’d think he might be blushing. “Well, you said he didn’t lie.” I smile but it feels out of
place on my face.