The Erl-queen’s son tilted his head. “Oh my. Do you mean to break your own queen’s law?”
“The laws of England have never helped me. Neither have they helped my sister.” George locked gazes with the fiend. “Marigold needs her brother.”
“Or does her brother need her, George Beath?”
Isaac stared. There was one thing the gossips had painted with some accuracy: the smile of thorns. It was as if the stem of a rose had been stripped and each thorn pressed into coal-black gum. A red tongue licked over them.
“She will not be pleased that you have come for her,” the Erl-prince said. “She does not speak well of you, gentlemen. Not at all.”
How did the Erl-queen know of them already? Surely even sprites weren’t that quick on their feet. Isaac tried to find his voice—he was ready to plead for Marigold’s life, to fall to his knees and beg—but George’s patience snapped violently. Isaac cried “No” an instant too late; the bullet pierced the Erl-queen’s son where a man’s heart should be. He looked down at his chest with a sort of curiosity.
“Oh, England,” he said. “When will you learn?”
He crumbled into nothing. Isaac threw himself upon the heap of leaves.
“George,” he choked out, “he might have led us to Marigold. Why in God’s name did you shoot him?”
“He would have lured us into a trap,” George said curtly. “You saw his mouth. They speak of roses without thorns, but elves are roses without blooms.”
“You killed her son. Their prince.” He hunted desperately through the leaves. “If this forces open war—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, we are already at war, Isaac. My poor sister is a prisoner of it.” George kept his pistol close. “On your feet, now. Help me find a yew.”
Isaac’s hands fell limp. “Yes. A yew.”
He had almost forgotten that they were looking for one. Yes, they must find a yew and tear the bark from it, and the sprites would return and lead them to the Erl-queen.
George extended his free hand. Isaac took it. Once he was upright, he used his cuff to smear away the sweat from his upper lip, tasting salt and fear. The leaves did not stir again.
He could not consider the repercussions now. If he could come out of this with Marigold in his arms, and her gratitude to him, even treason would be a small thing.
Yew. Yes, he knew what a yew tree looked like; he had seen them often enough as a boy in Surrey. He followed George farther into the gloom, staggering a little. When he looked over his shoulder, he could still make out the grass beyond the trees, and the light of the hansom cab beyond, but that light was ebbing.
“George,” he said, “ought we to leave a trail?”
“No, no. Once the Erl-queen is dead, her hold on the forest will be released.”
“You know this for certain?”
“Nothing is known for certain about the elves. This,” George said, “is intuition, and I trust mine implicitly. I trusted that you would love Marigold as fervently as she loved you, and was that not true? I trusted that you would one day make her a good husband, and I know that you will prove me right.” He stepped over a root. “You must ask her, after this, Isaac. You must marry her.”
“This hardly seems the time for talk of marriage, George.”
“You have delayed for too long. Marigold’s reputation will be in jeopardy by now.”
Isaac had no room for these thoughts. “Her reputation?” For some absurd reason, he chuckled. The forest was addling his wits. “She was sent by royal decree, George. Surely nobody could question—”
“Her honor was never in peril before, while I was there to protect you both, but she has been with the Erl-folk for three days,” George said, shooting him a doleful look. “Unchaperoned. Unprotected. You saw that creature. How . . . bestial it was.”
“Marigold would never—”
“Of course not, Ise, but London is a nest of gossips and busybodies. They will wonder how any woman’s virtue could survive in the company of such wildness. No one else will have her.”
It was as George was saying this, in his earnest tone, that Isaac heard the music. At first it was gentle, almost imperceptible, but it soon engulfed his hearing. “Do you hear that?” he asked, but George had already pressed ahead, taking the lantern with him. Isaac turned drunkenly.
“He called us cruel,” he murmured to no one in particular, “for taking Princess Alice away.”
A light flared in the forest, blue and pulsing. He followed the song toward it without care, forgetting about George, about Marigold, about the Erl-queen’s son. Every faery tale warned of the voices of the elves, of stone circles concealed in grass that ensnared whatever stepped inside them—but although Isaac knew this, the knowledge was distant, so it hardly seemed like it mattered at all. The forest was safe, and there was something miraculous waiting for him where the blue light shone, something that would put an end to his anguish. All he needed to do was go to it . . .
Soon he was following a stream, where iridescent fish were swimming. Their teeth were needles jutting out of their turned-down mouths. He waded in and cupped his hands, saw his own image in the water. The same face he had seen in the glass but happier, with bloodshot eyes.
He blinked, and he was standing before the mouth of a cave. Giddy, he lurched into it. His gloved hands rasped against stone. He breathed in an ambrosial scent.
Isaac, someone was calling. Isaac. The wind itself was whispering his name.
“Marigold,” he said.
Isaac.
He forced his body through the cave, scrabbling at its walls, splashing through the stream. Blind and deaf, he dashed his head against a low rock, but the pain was washed away by the realization that Marigold was close. He would have her back. She would be his to love again.
When he emerged, he shielded his eyes. Light was streaming from above him, glorious sunlight, softened to amber where it fell through a canopy of ochre leaves. Birds were chirruping from low branches, which were laden with rainbows of fruit. Had it not been nighttime on the other side?
He was standing in a sheltered glade, an Elysium in the depths of the forest—and all around him there were women and girls. A child with golden ringlets was laughing on the grass, her cheeks and brow flecked by the sunlight. Older girls, no more than fourteen, were fishing with spears. Others were dancing or picking fruit or making chains of wildflowers. One woman had a prune for a face and silver hair, and she held a newborn baby in her arms.