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 . . .”
A sob drowned out the rest of her words. It had risen in her throat without her noticing, and she wasn’t aware she was crying until she tasted a bitter tang in her mouth. Tears, blood, seawater—all of it tasted the same. Salt and salt and salt. Preston was now submerged to the chin.
“I wish we could have stayed there,” Preston whispered into her hair. “Forever—impossibly. I’m sorry for saying all that inane nonsense about things only mattering because they don’t last. That was hubris, I think. I don’t want to die here. I want—”