Chapter Twenty-Four
At first, I think my ears are ringing, but as the panicked roaring in my head clears, I realize it’s Queen Mor, screaming
behind me.
The heavy knife falls from my hand and slides across the polished marble floors, leaving a trail of dark blood in its wake.
When Emmett and I first conceived of this plan, I promised him I’d run after I stabbed Bram. That I’d find some way back to
him in England.
I lied. I never had any intention of leaving this room alive.
Behind me is a crowd of courtiers so thick I have no chance of making it through them, and stationed at all the exits are
royal guards in blue-and-gold livery, armed to the teeth.
And in front of me—
In front of me, Bram’s crumpled body begins to stir.
I lunge for the knife, ready to strike another blow if I need to, but it doesn’t make any sense—I struck true. I felt the
sickening snap of his breastbone and the squelch as the knife drove its way into his heart.
Lady Thalia appears at the edge of the crowd and snatches the knife from the floor with a revolting grin.
I lunge, ready to throw my entire body weight at her, but a guard appears behind me and pins my arms behind my back.
I shut my eyes tight, ready for him to slit my throat, or let Queen Mor snuff me out like tallow candle, but nothing comes.
Then I hear laughing.
Bram pushes himself up off the floor and smooths his doublet.
It’s got a sizable gash down the center from where the knife struck, large enough to see his bare chest beneath.
The skin there is the pale pink of recent healing. The blood splattered on his white undershirt is the only evidence there
was ever a wound. His body is unmarked, whole and completely fine.
It doesn’t make sense. This was my one chance.
Bram runs his tongue over his full bottom lip as he regards me, squirming in the guard’s grip.
“Take her to the dungeons!” he commands. “I’ll deal with her later.”
Another guard glances to Queen Mor. “And her?”
Bram chews on the inside of his cheek, then gestures to the throne beside him. “She can stay. The party was awfully dull before
you showed up.”
An iridescent petal floats down from the eaves and lands on top of Mor’s dark hair. She smirks victoriously.
I don’t bother struggling as the guards drag me down into the darkest depths of the castle. All the fight has leached out
of my body the same way the unicorn’s silver blood ran out of its neck and into the dirt.
I’m hollow, a husk of who I once was.
The guards toss me like a bag of rubbish into the last cell; the one that, until this afternoon, belonged to Queen Mor.
I slump against the dirt and examine my crushed hand.
It’s bright red, the skin pulsing and hot. The pain is so intense, it radiates up my arm and into my shoulder, like a physical
rope of aching fire.
I’m almost grateful for it; the agony gives me something to focus on that isn’t the emotional pain of my failure.
The dungeons are a pit of darkness, with only the shadowy glow of the distant faerielight by the guard’s station to see by.
I don’t know how long I sit in that cell, slipping in and out of consciousness.
It must be at least a full day by the way my stomach starts gnawing at itself. My broken hand throbs with a burning pain so
intense, sometimes it’s hard to breathe.
I’m drifting somewhere in the hazy space between sleep and wake when I hear a soft ringing sound and look up to see Eloree
knocking at my bars.
Her large eyes are frightened, but her voice is steady. “They won’t let your sister visit, ma’am, but she did convince His
Majesty to let me bring you some of your things.”
In her arms she holds a blanket stuffed with objects.
Gently, she unfurls it and passes them to me one by one. A leather-bound journal, an inkwell and fountain pen, a glass carafe
of water, and a pillow small enough to slip under the bars.
The last object, she handles with great care. It’s glowing a dim blue, small enough to fit within the palm of her hand.
It passes under the bars with only a hair’s breadth to spare.
I gasp softy, and the glow turns to a warmer shade of blue, the color of the sky on a crisp fall day.
It’s the lux flower Emmett gave me, that afternoon he took me to the waterfall and told me this place could be beautiful. I ruined it by goading him into a petty argument, just like I ruin everything else.
I clutch the flower to my chest and find it slightly warm. It’s the first comfort I’ve had, in this hole at the center of
the earth. No, not the earth, I remind myself. England will be forever out of reach to me.
It’s funny that the thought of rainy afternoons, a warm cup of tea, the Thames winding through the center of the city, is
what finally makes me cry.
I’ll never again see the Covent Garden arcade, or the trees of Hyde Park. I’ll never walk through Belgrave Square with a parasol
over my shoulder, or bound up the steps of my family home.
I’ll never see my mother and father again.
I’ll never see Emmett again.
I cling to the hope that Lydia is smart enough to keep her mouth shut about me, to send me down the river and protect herself
and our parents. I am all right with dying if it means she gets to keep on living.
I made that decision days ago, when I first conceived of this plan, though I hoped it wouldn’t go quite like this.
I feared if things went south and we didn’t get the opportunity to implement Rhion’s plan of threatening Bram with the knife
and asking him to abdicate or face prison, we’d need a second option.
Emmett knew I planned to threaten Mor into opening the door, but he didn’t know about the second part of my plan. I can’t
bring myself to regret it, not even now.
For all the time Emmett spent living under the same roof as Mor, I fear he doesn’t understand her as well as I do.
Above all things, Mor loves her son. Even threatened with death, I knew she would not betray him.
Emmett believed we were going to return to London, all of us, and let Mor spend a few weeks ruling as she used to. We would
then use our allies throughout the country to bind her in iron chains once more and have her cede power.
But she’d never do that, not if it meant leaving Bram behind forever.
When Bram caught me with Emmett, I knew he’d never let me close enough to kill him again. I had permanently severed what little
trust he had left in me.
But I also knew Mor would betray me to him, giving me the perfect opportunity to get within striking distance with Ferrinus
in my hand. I believed it was only through her that I’d ever get close to Bram again.
Only I didn’t expect that the knife would fail. I got it all correct except for that one crucial detail. I still don’t understand
why.
My certainty that I would be betrayed by Mor and need to kill Bram by my own hand is why I was fine leaving Lydia and the
other girls behind. The less they were tied to me, the better. They needed deniability to protect them.
I wrote a letter to Nan and Fennick just yesterday begging them to shelter my sister and friends until Rhion could figure
out a way to return them safely to England.
Eloree looks at me, startled, through the bars of my cell. She twists up the blanket until it, too, is small enough to pass
through and I take it from her gratefully.
“Why are you crying, ma’am? I tried to bring you your dresses, but it was forbidden.”
I choke out a watery laugh. “That was very kind of you, Eloree. You are welcome to take the dresses for yourself. I have the feeling I will not have use for them again.”
Concern flickers over her face, but she curtsies and turns to leave.
“Wait—”
She turns back, face expectant.
“I need food,” I say. “They haven’t been feeding me.”
She sucks on her bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I tried, really I did. They told me it was forbidden.”
“Who did?”
“The King’s Guard.”
Even crawling the few feet across the cell to retrieve the objects Eloree passed me has left me dizzy.
“Then tell His Majesty I request an audience.”
She looks to the ground sheepishly. “Prisoners aren’t allowed to make requests.”
“I’m the queen of England. Tell him I demand an audience.” I try my best, but my voice is too weak with hunger to carry any
real sense of authority.
Her mouth wobbles with pity. I don’t even have the strength to keep myself upright, so all I see is her mud-slicked slippers
disappearing down the hall.
It’s as if the darkness in the dungeon is a physical beast, swallowing me whole. Every moment I spend here I disappear a little
more.
I don’t know how many days I’ve spent in the dungeons before I notice the scratches on the far corner of the cell.
They’re near the bottom where the stone wall meets the dirt floor. It’s as if they’ve been carved with a sewing pin; it clearly took whoever wrote them multiple strokes to make each letter visible.
My vision is blurry, but the message is unmistakable:
Ivy Benton, 1830–1848
There was no one braver or more brilliant. She was too good for this world and she was too good for me. But that didn’t stop
me from loving her. I loved her. I loved her. I love her.
I reach out with my good hand and brush my fingertips over the cool stone.
This must have been Emmett’s cell, I realize. He sat in this awful place and mourned me.
I’m surprised I still have enough moisture in my body to cry, but hot tears run down my cheeks and into the neckline of my
filthy dress.
In the middle of the cell, the lux flower glows a deep, melancholy blue.
That day by the waterfall comes back to me. Emmett looked so beautiful with his face tilted toward the sun, the spray of fresh
water making his hair even wavier than usual.
There was so much happiness in his voice as he told me he was good at being a regent. It was to him that I first admitted
out loud that I was proud of my work as queen.
And I don’t believe anyone deserves to rule a country, not in the way Queen Mor did, with a grip so tight it choked the life out of its people.
But if Emmett and I had had more time, perhaps we could have created an England that was built for more than just the aristocracy.
Where girls could aspire to more than just marriage and your family name didn’t determine your fate.
Perhaps if I’d had the chance, I could have been the kind of ruler who didn’t speak the loudest, but amplified the voices of those who matter most, society’s most vulnerable members.
It was easier when I didn’t let myself want anything.
Once I started, I wanted everything too much.
Will Bram give me a funeral after I starve to death? I wonder. If so, what will my tombstone read? Ivy, queen of England?
Or Ivy Benton, the most gullible girl in the world?
The lux flower shifts toward periwinkle.
I was queen. I laugh audibly at the thought, it’s so ridiculous.
Whatever else happens, he can’t take that away from me. I may have only ever been a means to an end, to him. But I was still
queen.
Will he allow England to mourn me? Will he tell my parents? Will he open the door so that I can be buried there?
Rhion’s words come back to me. Bram is the door.
I’ve long wondered how Lydia returned to London from the Otherworld if Bram didn’t open the door for her. Vaguely, I figured
Queen Mor must have been the one to let her return, as part of their bargain, but it doesn’t make sense with what Lydia has
since told me about her escape or what Mor said about assuming it was her ex-husband who sent her back.
But what if no one opened the door for Lydia? What if she opened it herself? After all, she was Bram’s wife. She was queen
of the Otherworld.
And Bram would have underestimated her.
What if in her panicked escape, she accessed the magic that was her right by way of marriage?
And if she escaped, maybe I could too.
I close my eyes and search through the deepest, darkest parts of me.
I picture Kensington Palace, with its checkered floors and grand staircase. I imagine my old attic room back at Caledonia
Cottage with its narrow bed and window that looked out onto the green of Kensington Park.
I reach for it, my hand outstretched. I open my eyes and find—nothing. Nothing but the darkness of the cell and that flickering
lux flower.
I take a steadying breath and attempt it once more. This time I focus not on what home looks like but how I felt there. My
chest grows warm as I think of Emmett teaching me to waltz in front of a roaring fire, of Olive baking bread in the kitchen
of the cottage, of Lydia helping me into my dress on my wedding day.
I’ve already lived the best days of my life, and I didn’t even know it.
Agony pierces me. I can’t help myself as I let out a wail of despair.
Something deep within me shifts. My hands tingle, even the ruined one. My head feels lighter than it has in days.
Perhaps it’s death.
My eyes are so heavy that opening them seems like a herculean feat. It would be so easy to slip into the darkness, to let
myself be carried away by the tide of it.
I could find Ethel and Greer and Emmett’s father and the girl in the deer mask and tell them how sorry I am.
It would be the easiest thing in the world. I know that with a certainty that reaches to my soul. I would be welcomed and
made whole in death.
But what a waste it would be to give in to something because it is easy, when I’ve come this far.
The smell of damp earth and floor polish hits my nose.
With every last amount of strength I have, I pry open my eyes.
In front of me is a perfect rectangle of light, the grand foyer of Kensington Palace visible within it.
Emmett turns and gasps.