Chapter Three
I step between Carolina and my surprise visitor, shielding the child from his roving silver gaze. He looks about my room with an air of bemusement, as if he has never seen a place so shoddy and humble and cannot fathom why anyone would endure it.
“You,” I choke out.
His gaze drifts back to my face, and he spreads his hands elegantly, as if to say, Me, obviously.
I stare at him as my heart flutters in panic, feeling all of eight years old again.
He is real.
He is here.
“Carolina,” I say softly, and though I do not turn my gaze from the faerie, I feel her big brown eyes on me, “go back to the school.”
“Sister Rose?”
“I will be all right. Go, and say nothing of this to Sister Agatha or anyone else.” I give her shoulder a weak squeeze, and into her hand I press one of my embroidered kerchiefs.
The spellknots on it ward against minor injury, discourage ill intentions toward the bearer, and distract watchful eyes.
It should help her sneak into the school unnoticed.
“We wouldn’t want them to know you were sneaking out, would we? ”
She nods, frowning slightly at the kerchief but gripping it tight, and slips by me.
She doesn’t argue, thank the Fates. The faerie’s hand flicks as she slides past him, his fingers tracing her unruly red braid.
I choke on a breath until the end of her braid slips free of his touch, and she vanishes down the stairs.
“She reminds me of another little Weaver,” he says. “One of surpassing cleverness, who summoned me to her side with an ancient moorwitch spell.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
He smiles. “Come. Let us take this conversation somewhere warmer. We have much to discuss, my clever little witch.”
We go to the Red Finch, a public house across the road.
There I sit in rigid trepidation, in a hard wooden chair near the fire.
Half the tables are full, with patrons brooding over empty tankards or halfheartedly gambling over dice.
A tired musician fiddles for his supper in the corner, receiving more curses than coin for his trouble.
The place stinks of smoke, burnt bread, and spilled beer.
The faerie sits across from me, his spine straight as a poker, his hands folded one atop the other on the table, his black gloves beneath them.
His fingers are bony and very pale, his nails long.
I stare at them so I do not have to look at his face, frozen to my chair like a block of ice.
My skin feels too tight, and I fidget with my sleeve, where I keep a skein of thread always hidden for emergencies.
The fiddler switches to a new ballad, his tune as sharp and callous as the winter wind, and every scrape of his bow sends a chill rippling over my skin.
“You have grown up,” the faerie says, eyeing me brazenly. “And grown lovely. But I cannot help but wonder if the young woman is as clever and bold as the little girl?”
The faerie appears to be not a day older than when last I saw him.
A stranger might guess him to be twenty or even younger, but I know he is a good deal older than that, perhaps far older than I can imagine.
He seems at ease in this humble environment, despite his expensive black tailcoat and blue silk cravat, which would be more suited to some high-society dinner than a saloon barely outside the Devil’s Acre.
His hair—frosty blond—is shorter than it was twelve years ago, but still long enough for him to tie at his nape with a black silk ribbon.
His eyes are the chilled, light blue of aquamarine, with darker cracks running outward from his irises, so they seem faceted like diamonds; when he turns his head, the light plays over those hard angles, making his gaze glint.
Against the alabaster paleness of him, the black of his lashes is almost startling, their long fringe luring attention to the ageless jewels of his eyes.
The more I stare, the less he fits here, in this human place.
I gaze around to see what the others make of him, but curiously, no one else gives him a second look.
Then I notice the glamour knots embroidered on his collar and sleeves, which must make him appear more human to them than he does to me.
Glamour knots are like that—they cease working on someone who has seen one’s true appearance already, as I saw him twelve years ago—but even so, when I glance away, he shifts in my periphery.
Lines appear in his face. Golden highlights soften the shocking white of his hair.
He remains handsome, beautiful even, but not unnaturally so.
The effect makes me shudder.
Emma, a serving girl who has waited on me here before, brings us hot tea.
She gives me a little frown, her lips pursed in judgment, as she glances from me to the wealthy stranger I’m with.
She, at least, seems to recognize he is not her ordinary sort of patron.
I read her suspicions easily enough, and blush even though nothing could be further from the truth.
“Dinner?” she asks, the word sounding like an accusation on her lips.
“Bring my companion a plate of your best,” says the faerie, looking at me while he says it. “And for me, fresh strawberries dusted with sugar.”
“Fresh—” Emma’s eyes bulge. “It is March, sir.”
“Check your stores, my dear,” he returns coolly, and he dismisses her with a flick of his hand.
Emma, looking scandalized, starts back to the kitchen.
I feel a sudden urge to grab her apron and pull her back, to beg her not to leave me alone with him.
It feels jarring to see him here, in so common and familiar a place, as though he shouldn’t be capable of existing outside shadowy corners or snowy forests or the pages of a faerie tale book.
Some foolish part of me had thought I would be forever safe from him, if I only kept to the light and the densely packed streets of London.
There is no place less like a faerie tale than this, and yet there he sits, his slender dark eyebrows drawn together as he studies me.
“You have hardly blinked for the last ten minutes,” murmurs the faerie, his head tilting to the side.
The motion causes his fine white hairs to shift, revealing the pointed tip of his ear and the blue gemstone dangling from his lobe like an icicle.
“Are you feverish? You do seem alarmingly pale, but I’m no great judge of these things.
You mortals are such fragile creatures. And how thin you are. You ought to eat better.”
I cannot quite convince myself he is there. I am still holding out hope that he is a trick of my frostbitten imagination.
“Why do you look at me that way?” He waves a hand; on every finger glints a band of silver. “Did you think I would not return? Did you think I had forgotten our bargain?”
“Twelve years,” I murmur.
Twelve years of jumping at shadows and hearing his whispers in the back of my mind.
Twelve years of wondering if I’d dreamed the entire thing and if perhaps I was mad.
Twelve years . . . and yes, I had begun to hope he might have forgotten.
After all, what is one petrified eight-year-old girl to an immortal faerie?
More than I had wanted to believe, apparently.
“My aunt cannot speak,” I say. “She cannot even feed herself. They keep her in an institution, caged like an animal.”
He rubs his forefinger over his bottom lip as he considers me. “And does that not bring you comfort? She will never hurt you again. Is that not what you asked of me?”
“I never asked you to . . .” I swallow hard. “I was eight years old. I didn’t understand—”
“You understood how to Weave the summoning spell.” His voice loses a bit of its polished ease, deepening and betraying his age.
“You knew the powers you called upon. I saw into your heart when you made your bargain with me, and I knew what you really wanted. You wanted her to suffer as she had made you suffer.”
“I was a child, and I felt as children feel, in untempered extremes. I was hurt and terrified, and I wanted to be free of her. I couldn’t think beyond that!”
“Indeed, but do not parade ignorance before me as if it could cleanse your conscience. You called for me, and I came. I offered you a bargain, and you accepted. You tied the vowknot yourself, and I gave you what you wanted.” He leans forward, hands splayed on the table.
Whether it is a slip of his glamour or a trick of my eyes, it seems for a moment that each of his fingers has one too many knuckles.
“And now there is something that I want, and you will help me get it.”
I open my mouth to reply, then shut it as Emma returns, setting before me a plate heaped with steaming pork, roasted potatoes, and soft bread. Before the faerie she places, with an expression of bewilderment, a plate of fresh strawberries dusted with sugar.
“I . . .” She stares at the plate, then gives her head a shake, as if it were filled with fog. “Can I get you anything else?”
“This will do,” the faerie says. “Away now, my flower, and don’t bother us again.”
She floats off, still with that dazed look in her eyes, and vanishes into the kitchen.
The sight of the food only turns my stomach. I sit back in my chair and summon the courage to look him in the eyes as he delicately cuts a strawberry and slides it into his mouth on the flat of his knife.
“Why now?” I ask. “Why did you wait all these years to demand your payment?”
“I have many other investments to keep track of, not just you. Though, dear Rose,” he sighs, as he cuts another strawberry, “you’ve always held a special place in my thoughts.
The little girl with the cleverness to Weave a spell few masters would dare.
Oh, yes.” He pauses to point his knife at me. “You hold a special place indeed.”