Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(73)

“Hmm,” I said. I had taken the Lady’s theatrically gruesome appearance for glamour, but now I wondered if this was entirely the truth. She has at times put me in mind of the gallows-goblins; I wonder if she counts one or more of the creatures among her ancestors.[*] Wendell’s kingdom is not known as a realm of monsters for nothing, and why would his stepmother have cared if one of her courtiers had a morbid hobby, so long as it did not affect her own interests?

Stepping gingerly over the stains, I sat in the chair at the dressing table. “Thank you,” I said to the housekeeper. “You may go.”

“May,” he repeated, a faint question in his voice. “I may also remain, but in such a way that she will not notice me.”

“Do as you wish,” I said. Perhaps I should have responded better to his kindness, but I had no capacity to think of anything but the revelation contained within my grandfather’s journal, and the desperate hope now lodged in my throat like a splinter of bone that might twist and choke me at any moment. The oíche sidhe went to stand against the wall, and when I looked back, I could barely see him. If I focused, it was just possible to make out his greyish outline against the darkness; if I did not, my gaze slid across the wall as if he were nothing but a stray hook or nail.

I waited. After perhaps half an hour, the Lady entered the room.

She stilled at the sight of me sitting there in the shadows, but she did not flee, as I’d half feared she would. Instead she removed her cloak in one smooth gesture and hung it from a hook, where it began to drip on the floor.

“Well,” she said, brushing her bloody hands over her black gown. “You’ve worked it out, then.”

“I have.”

“What do you wish to know?” As she spoke, she moved towards a tea trolley beside the main entrance that must have been set out for her by a servant; it held a pot, its spout lightly steaming, and a single cup. Into this she poured the tea, adding sugar and cream, her movements unhurried.

“You wish to know why I was exiled?” she went on. “That is a long story—or perhaps you only care about why I came here, to this court? There was once a door that connected my realm with this one—ah, but I can see from your face that you knew that already. I destroyed the door after I came through, so that my enemies could not follow me.”

She handed me the cup. The handle was bloody now, and the tea smelled of smoke. I held it without drinking. Curiously, my hand did not tremble at all, and I realized that I was not afraid of her. I felt—nothing. Or nothing where she was concerned, at any rate. All my focus had attenuated upon one thing, and surrounding this was a vast, wintry stillness that was not quite the same as calm, but which I could put to the same purpose.

“I have not come to speak of the past,” I said. “My grandfather’s journal said you communed with ghosts and had seen the door to Death. Is that true? Take me to it.”

She settled herself upon the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Her lips were very red, and she watched me in a way that was distinctly predatory. Yet still I felt nothing under her regard.

“You do not wish to speak of Edgar?” she said. “Why I left him?” Her eyes were too large for her face, and without her cloak I saw she was slim—unnaturally slim; I felt she might turn sideways and slip from my sight.

“No,” I said. “Only tell me if what he wrote was correct. Have you truly seen so much of Death that you have learned how to travel there without dying yourself? Or was this empty poetry?”

“He bored me,” she said.

At this, my hand clenched slightly on my knee. “Is there a door?”

“Will you have me killed?” she said. “Have you already ordered it? If I flee now, shall I be hunted for the rest of my days?”

“Yes,” I said, “if you do not help me.”

She seemed to consider this. While she did, I sipped my tea.

“You have his journal,” she said slowly. “Yes—I remember him scribbling in it. Then that is how you knew who I was?”

I nodded. “I did not realize it on my first reading, because the possibility that his mysterious captor might be in my midst did not occur to me—for one thing, the courtly fae do not generally travel between realms as the common fae do. And for another, I did not know there had been a door between Exmoor and this world. Once I did, I began to wonder…I examined my grandfather’s descriptions of his beloved more closely. They accord perfectly with yourself. He referred to your apparel only once, when he noted you liked to dress in red.”

She smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. It was indeed golden, though the ends were stained with red. “He doted on me so,” she said. “More so than most of the others. How I miss him! I always do, after they are gone, no matter how they tired me in the end.”

She had accepted my explanation, and so I did not feel it necessary to clarify that I had not been certain she was the faerie who had so bewitched my grandfather—it had been a theory, supported by their similarity in appearance as well as nature. She had given me the proof when she had entered the room and understood why I was there.

“If you do not help me,” I said, “Lord Taran will see that your victims are properly avenged. You have slain many Folk, but I wonder if you see yourself as a match for him.”

Her response to this, a slight stiffening, was answer enough. It was an empty bluff on my part—I’d spoken to no one except the housekeeper before coming here; entirely ill-advised, I can see that now, but I was then possessed by a single-mindedness so complete I think I could have traversed a field of embers without flinching if it brought me closer to my goal.