“No,” she said, even as her breath came in rough, panicked spurts. “No. I don’t want to go with you.”
The Fairy King cocked his head, and for a moment he looked quizzical. Almost human. “And why not? What is tying you to this insipid mortal world? Here you are just another beautiful girl who has been treated meanly. With me, you could be something so much greater. With me, you could be a queen.”
Part of her had waited her entire life to hear those words, fearing them and yearning for them in equal measure. Effy let out a tremulous breath, the phantom pain of her missing ring finger still throbbing.
The belief, the hope and the terror both, had kept her alive. At last Effy understood the magic of Hiraeth, its curse and its blessing. Hiraeth Manor, the grand thing that Ianto had wanted her to build, would always be an imagined future, a castle in the air. The magic was the impossibility of it. The unreal could never disappoint you, could never harm you, could never falter under your feet.
But now the real and the unreal had snarled together and it no longer mattered which was which. Effy was staring down the Fairy King in all his immense power, and she was just a girl clutching a hollow stone.
“I’ll do it if you save him,” she blurted out. “Save Preston, and I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever you like.”
The Fairy King looked at her with a treacherous fondness. “I don’t make slanted deals with mortal girls. Mortal girls make their desperate bargains with me. You have walked into my world already, Euphemia. You took the bait and sauntered right into my trap. I will have you no matter what, my darling girl. You will not elude me again. But it would make me so much happier if you took my hand and came with a lovely smile on your face.”
It would have been painless. Effy knew that. If it was a kind of death, it would be much quicker than drowning, easier than falling into the sea along with this ruined house.
In some way, she had always yearned for this, to slip through the final crack in the world. But she had a rope to tether her now, and walls that stood, and a foundation that was strong.
A seed of something began to bloom in Effy’s mind.
“How would you have me?” she asked carefully, trying to make her voice sound low and sweet. “Would you have me on my knees?”
The idea seemed to surprise the Fairy King, if he were a creature capable of feeling such a thing. He smiled his beautiful smile.
“Yes,” he said. “It would make me very happy, to see you kneel.”
Very slowly, Effy lowered herself to the ground. The broken glass dug into her knees, but she swallowed the pain of it. As the Fairy King stalked toward her, she scrabbled through the wreckage until her hands closed on a long, broad shard of glass, about the size of a small dagger.
“Euphemia,” the Fairy King said, his voice a warning.
“Don’t,” she bit out. “Don’t speak my name.”
And then she held up the shard, the bit of mirrored glass that took in the Fairy King’s form and reflected it right back at him.
He stared at himself for a long moment, seeing, for the first time, his own lovely face, his black hair, his bone crown. The moment felt so heavy that Effy nearly let her arm drop from the weight of it.
Just as she was about to give up, there was a second shuddering metamorphosis: in the mirror, the Fairy King changed. His beautiful face turned waxy and sallow, cheeks hollowed like porcelain bowls. His hair grew silver and brittle and then fell out.
His skin sagged around his bones, creasing with wrinkles, and in the span of seconds he became a very, very, very old man, pitiful and mortal after all.
The Fairy King opened his wizened mouth, but he could not speak a word. He crumbled away like a sandcastle on the shore, run over by the mindless tide. His eyes shriveled in his skull. Even his bone crown splintered into tiny pieces.
And then, at long last, he was nothing more than dust.
With difficulty, Effy got to her feet. She staggered over to the ruin of him, her knees aching and her stockings spotted with blood. For a final time, she raised the hag stone to her eye.
But through the hole, all was the same. The Fairy King was still ash on the wind. And Hiraeth was still crumbling around her. Effy let the stone fall from her hand, but if it made a sound, she didn’t hear it. There was only her own heartbeat, her own breathing, the gentle but ceaseless reminder that she lived.
Effy let the shard drop, too, some of her blood falling along with it. Then she limped through the ruined threshold of the dining room, back to the rotted basement door.
Sixteen
No man escapes his primal fault,
That silent seep of black decay.
Decay is one thing, danger another, I said—laughingly.
But the wise man laughed right back at me, and said—
The sea is a thing no sword can slay.
From “The Mariner’s Demise” by Emrys Myrddin, 200 AD
The Fairy King was gone, but the house was still sinking, and now there was no time. Preston could have drowned already. The mere thought of it threatened to destroy her, the notion of his floating corpse—
But when Effy flung open the door to the basement, she saw him there, his face pale in the tepid light, his glasses flashing like two beacons.
She nearly collapsed in relief. He was drowned up to his shoulders, the walls still weeping, but he was alive. Effy stepped down into the black water and swam until she reached him. She threw her arms around him, holding on to him like a buoy, as the water eddied around them, creeping upward toward the open door.
“Effy,” he gasped. “I thought you were—”
“I thought you were, too.” She touched every part of him that she could reach—his cheeks and his long, narrow nose, his forehead and chin, the line of his jaw that she’d kissed last night, the throat that pulsed beneath her hand. Her head throbbed, but she paid it no mind. Signs of life, she thought. They could both still survive this.
Eventually, her hands wandered down his arms until she reached the manacles holding him fast to the wall. Effy grasped the chains and pulled. Preston pulled, too, desperately straining forward against his bindings, until both were breathless. The stake had not budged an inch.
Panic began to seep into her. “It won’t move.”
“I know.” Preston’s voice trembled, his breath against her cheek. “I’ve been pulling this whole time—I’m held fast. Effy, you have to get out of here.”
She let out a low, shaky laugh, a sound that contained no humor at all. What else could she do but laugh? It was absurd.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I’m not leaving you here. I’ll find something to break the chains—”
She was interrupted by another terrible crashing noise—thunder, glass shattering, floorboards cracking? Effy couldn’t tell anymore. There was so much destruction around them that it had all begun to sound the same. Plaster and dirt rained from the ceiling. The water had risen to Effy’s chin.
“There isn’t any time,” Preston said quietly. “You need to leave.”
“No.” Effy locked her arms over his shoulders again, digging her fingernails in. “No.”
“If you don’t, we’re both going to die here, and what’s the use in that? You can still make it down to Saltney, take the car keys out of my pocket and—”
She hated him then, well and truly hated him, for trying to be so damned reasonable. The Fairy King was real, which meant they were far beyond the point of reason.
And besides—there was no reasoning with the sea.
“You’re not being fair,” Effy choked out. “Do you really think I can just walk up these stairs and close the door behind me and leave? After everything . . .”