Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(72)

Someone was knocking at the door. It was a gentle, hesitant sound, as if the gesture required effort. I stood, still half asleep, trying not to look at the bed where Shadow and Orga were curled up together. They watched me as I passed on unsteady feet, and I realized they had been there all day, sometimes napping and sometimes not, but aware of me at all times. Once Orga had assured herself that I was not going to keel over, she put her head back down and closed her eyes.

I expected Niamh or Callum—perhaps even Lord Taran. Instead, the hall beyond the door was darkened and empty.

I stood there for a moment, blinking. A little shiver went through me—I’d been reading my grandfather’s disturbing journal entries late into the night, putting the book aside in favour of some academic tome only to pick it up again, irresistibly drawn back to the tragedy of it. For companionship, perhaps, in my own tragedy. I could hear my grandfather’s voice in the text.

I closed the door. Likely I’d imagined the knock, groggy as I’d been, or it had been Niamh or Callum again; each had come by multiple times. I had locked them out, and had heard them muttering together outside the door, sometimes with one or more councillors, until Lord Taran’s voice had ordered them all away. Taran, at least, had understood the importance of the work I was doing.

At some point I’d dropped my grandfather’s journal, and it lay facedown on the floor by my chair, pages bent. I picked it up.

Oddly, though, as I glanced down at my grandfather’s writing, I wasn’t thinking of him. I was thinking of the butter faerie, and that sensation I’d felt when I’d learned she had come from Somerset, where once there had been a door to Wendell’s kingdom. It had been a feeling akin to hunting for a word on the tip of my tongue. I had it now—perhaps my sleeping mind had solved the mystery.

Exmoor was in Somerset.

Did that mean the now-broken door in the Silva Lupi had led to Exmoor, to the very landscape where my grandfather had met his doom? Possibly. Not likely, my rational mind replied. But still—it was an odd coincidence.

At that, I felt another tremor. Coincidence is not a word to be taken lightly in Faerie.

I turned back to my grandfather’s journal, fingers trembling against the pages. My interest had been reframed, and now I reread each word of his sojourn in Exmoor, stopping each time I could not make out his shorthand until I’d untangled it, rather than skipping over these parts as I’d done before. This was no longer merely a family heirloom, a tragic story no more relevant to my plight than one of Wendell’s novels.

When I’d finished, I sat and stared out the window for a long moment. The weeping rowan tapped its dark berries against the pane.

Then I stood. I opened the door again and listened—Wendell’s apartments seemed abandoned. But then I heard the faintest of noises in the bathroom. When I made my way there, I found it empty.

Empty—but very clean. A mop leaned against the wall by the bath, and half the floor was damp, as if the mopper had been interrupted in the middle of his task.

“Are you there?” I said. “I need to speak with you. Will you show yourself?”

There came a rustling noise behind me. I turned and found myself facing one of the oíche sidhe.

We gazed blankly at each other. Or, rather, I was blank—his face was inscrutable.

“Are you the one I spoke with before?” I demanded—I did not intend to sound rude, but I’ve no doubt that’s how it came across. Ordinarily, I attempt to sand down my bluntness, but it did not even occur to me then.

The creature gave no sign of offence. “I am he.”

I gazed at him. The faerie looked so much like Wendell had, back in Ljosland, that I felt an inexplicable surge of fury, and I wanted to scream at him, to strike him with my fists. The feeling vanished as abruptly as it came, leaving me breathless and sick.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I don’t know what he thought I was apologizing for. “Does Her Highness have need of me?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, trying to put myself back together. I don’t know why I’d thought of this creature first. There were others who could help me.

No—I knew why. He made me think of Wendell.

“You know all the rooms in the castle,” I said. “You know where the nobility dwell.”

He nodded with the faintest of frowns, knitting his many-jointed fingers together in front of him.

“I wish to speak with the Lady in the Crimson Cloak,” I said. “Will you take me to her?”



* * *



—

The housekeeper not only knew the way to the Lady’s room, which was located at the other end of the castle and down a staircase, then up another staircase, but he knew that it had a back door. We went through a storage room crammed with silken cloaks and gowns that seemed to be in varying states of decay, some only a little musty, others furred with layers of dust, then through a vast and echoing bathing room that seemed designed for communal washing, off of which was a narrow door to the Lady’s bedchamber.

This was empty, shadowed, and spare, with only a wardrobe, dressing table, and bed clothed in blacks and whites. Naturally, the floorboards were covered in many dark stains.

“She does not like us to clean those,” the oíche sidhe said, and for once I could read the emotion in his face—pure disapproval.