Chapter Seventeen
I awake to a thump outside my door. Someone yelps. Another thump.
Barely alert, I throw a dressing gown over my thin nightdress and fling the door open.
Emmett is standing there, shirtless, a blanket and pillow on the floor beside him.
Next to him is Rhion, clutching his cheek and swearing.
“What is going on?” I exclaim.
Emmett shakes out his hand. “I punched Rhion.”
Rhion curses again. “I tripped over him! He was lying on the floor in the dark!”
Dawn is rising, casting the long corridor of the castle in soft pink light and long purple shadows.
“Why are you outside my door?” I ask, sleepy and confused.
“I needed to speak with you, Your Majesty,” Rhion says urgently.
I turn to Emmett. “And you?”
He doesn’t answer, just looks at the floor. His hair brushes against his bare shoulder, and my eyes drift down his torso.
Look at his face, I chide myself. Now is not the time to be getting distracted by the planes of his muscled chest. His body has grown sharper in our time apart.
“Emmett?”
“I’ve been sleeping here,” he admits.
“Excuse me?” I ask, confused.
“I’ve been sleeping here,” he repeats.
“No, I heard you the first time. I’m confused as to why.”
He gestures to Rhion. “To keep you safe from creeps like him.”
“I’m on your side,” Rhion protests. He’s in a black doublet embroidered with purple crocuses; it’s strange to see him not
in one of his ridiculous outfits. The only human bit of his ensemble is a cameo he’s wearing on a chain.
“You think I’m going to believe that after you brought my friends here?” I accuse him.
Rhion sighs. “Allow me to explain myself.”
Emmett glances anxiously down the hall, clearly aware that anyone could see us here.
“Fine,” I huff. “Come in, the both of you.”
Like scolded schoolboys, they obey. I slam the door behind us. They take the two silk armchairs set by my fireplace. It’s
a little funny to see such large, masculine men in my decidedly fussy and feminine room. They’re like toy soldiers in a dollhouse.
I perch on the end of my bed. The silk linens are mussed from my fitful sleep. I’ve got a raging headache and would like nothing
more than to be unconscious right now. The ghost of Emmett’s kiss still haunts me.
I point between them. “Explain.”
Emmett left the blanket outside, so he sits, bare-chested, wide-eyed in a transparent attempt to look innocent.
I hope Rhion thinks I’m staring him down as an intimidation tactic and not because I cannot bear to look at Emmett right now.
“Bram was always going to let you into the Otherworld,” Rhion says. “He’d sent the invitations for the first trial weeks before.”
“You put her in danger intentionally? I’ll kill you,” Emmett lashes out.
I have no time for Rhion’s games or Emmett’s petulance.
Emmett opens his mouth, but I hold up my hands. “Don’t start.”
I point to Rhion. “You—keep talking.”
Rhion turns to Emmett. “Bram had his own plans already in motion. I needed to use them to our advantage.”
“By turning on my friends?”
“I’ll admit I was also the one who told him his other suitors would be at Marion Thorne’s town house and to bring them to
the Otherworld as leverage against you.”
“So you were lying the whole time?” I say angrily. My friends are in danger because of my decision to trust Rhion. I think
of Este waiting at home without her sister, of Ben and Olive making tea cakes in the kitchen, of Eduart, completely alone
in the world, save for us.
“You underestimate them,” Rhion says emphatically. “They’re rebels, radicals, they’ve been scheming and training for months.
I had confidence you all could withstand whatever was coming. I tried to give them time to flee, but Faith and Marion stayed
and fought to buy time for the others. I regret I wasn’t fast enough, but it’s not the worst thing that they’re here in the
Otherworld with us. More allies is a good thing.”
“Still,” I snap in return.
“I did it and it’s done,” Rhion says. “The girls put on a brilliant show.”
“They were beaten.”
“Not on my orders,” Rhion replies emphatically. “I did my best to mitigate the damage. The guards who did it have been punished.”
“But your actions still led to it.”
“Bram’s actions,” Rhion corrects me.
“You betrayed me,” I reply. I’m so foolish to have expected straightforward allyship from a faerie.
“I didn’t. I swear it. I might have lied by omission, but we have the same goals. I knew Bram was planning on the trials,
and I knew you needed an ally. He was growing suspicious after your visit to my town house. He didn’t like that we’d been
alone together. By my betraying you, Bram trusts me more than ever. I wield influence over him. You’re here, in the Otherworld.
That was always going to happen. Now you have two friends, and I have Bram’s ear. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more forthcoming
with you, but I promise, from now on, I will be.”
“I don’t know how to believe you.”
Rhion casts his gaze to the floor, his clear blue eyes full of pain. “Then don’t. But know that I will do anything to ensure Lydia gets out of this unscathed. I have no regrets.”
Emmett turns to Rhion, shocked. “Lydia?”
I roll my eyes, still annoyed. “He claims he’s in love with her.”
Emmett’s expression darkens. “You’re not good enough for her.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Rhion says.
“I’ll kill you myself if you’re lying about this,” Emmett snarls.
“I’ll help,” I say.
Rhion shakes his head. “We share the same goals, the same as we always have. We need to get you and your sister through these
trials, and we can use Bram’s distraction to unseat him in the process.”
“But how do we unseat him?” I ask. “We need a plan.” I feel so hopeless, so naive. There’s so much about the Otherworld I don’t understand.
Emmett leans forward on his elbows. “I’m making progress there. I just need a little more time.”
I look to him in surprise. “You are?”
Emmett glances sideways at Rhion, suspicious. “I won’t give details, not with him here.”
I’m so sick of not knowing, especially when it feels I’m finally getting close to what I came here for. This was always my
plan: find a way to defeat Bram, and bring Lydia and Emmett back to an England that is safe from him.
I stand and reach for the doorknob. Both men look at me with surprise.
“Where are you going?” Emmett asks.
“Your room,” I answer without breaking my stride.
Emmett stands to follow, then levels me with a glance, his hazel eyes as clever as ever. “My, Ivy, this is hardly the time
to be seducing me.” His voice is weak, though, and my heart hurts to see him trying to thaw the ice between us after the last
disastrous few days.
I roll my eyes and point to Rhion. “Send for Queen Lydia. She’s needed in Prince Emmett’s room,” I instruct. Rhion nods wordlessly
and takes off down the stairs.
“Why my room?” Emmett asks once we are alone.
“Because you need to not be naked while we’re having this conversation and I assume that’s where you keep your shirts.”
Emmett sidesteps me to unlock his door and I follow him inside.
“That’s not fair.” A hint of humor sneaks into his voice. “I’m only half-naked.”
I take a seat on the bench by the roaring fire, and it’s only then that a ripple of discomfort goes through me. It takes me a moment to identify why. It’s because it looks so lived in, so Emmett.
There’s a pile of leather-bound journals on the floor next to me. In the center of the room is a large desk, constructed of
white stone with veins of lilac quartz. Atop it sits a stack of books from the human world, bound in leather with thick, uneven
parchment, all from before Queen Mor shut the door between our worlds. One is opened to a handwritten copy of the Vulgate
Cycle. There are other papers and dried-up inkwells scattered around it.
The blanket on the armchair behind the desk is the same color green as his quilt back at Kensington Palace. I half expect
Pig to emerge, bleary-eyed, from beneath it.
There are a few cabinets that reach to the ceiling, but not much else in the way of decor. The bench by the fireplace is the
only place long enough for Emmett to lie down, which might explain the blanket and embroidered pillow on the floor by my feet.
It’s not a bedroom, I realize. It’s an office.
Emmett crosses the room to his wardrobe and pulls a loose white shirt from one of the cabinets, then settles down in the window
seat, adjusting himself on the silk pillows to face me. “I’m sorry about last night.”
Involuntarily, my fingers drift up and brush against my bruised lips. “Don’t be.”
“Let me be, please,” he whispers. “I would never . . .” He trails off and tries again. “I’d rather die than do anything you
didn’t want me to.”
“I did want it.”
“Not like that. Never like that.” He pulls a hand through his hair. “I fixed it though.”
“Fixed it?”
“Bram won’t hear about it.”
It hadn’t yet occurred to me to be terrified of that, but of course, I should have been. “How?”
He looks so sad as he answers. “I called in a few favors.”
He notices the way my eyes are roving around the room. “It’s not Kensington,” he says, like he’s eager to change the subject.
“You never liked it much there, either,” I offer.
“Not until you arrived,” he says softly.
“This is your office.” I don’t mean it as an accusation but it sounds like one anyway. “Where do you sleep?”
He gestures vaguely to the bench I’m sitting on. “There, mostly.”
I don’t believe him. I want to prod at the subject, but the door swings open, and our eye contact breaks.
Lydia strides in wearing an apron over a white cotton dress. “Awfully early to pull me from bed. Quite rude, you two. No respect
for your elders.”
Emmett glances at her paint-smeared hands. “You weren’t asleep.”
Lydia glances at me, sisterly concern on her face. “Not the point. What did I miss?” she asks as she sits down beside me.
Rhion lingers in the doorway.
“Not you,” Emmett calls.
Rhion’s shoulders drop as the door shuts in his face.
Once settled back in the room, Emmett turns to Lydia. “I’m getting Ivy up to date on our little project.”