“The four walls will stand,” Angharad said. “And we don’t have another choice.”
At the very least, Preston could recognize the logic in that. His hand gripped hers more fiercely.
There was no path now; it was all mud and sucking water. They skidded along the edge of the cliff, limbs flailing, Preston’s other arm flying out to catch them both against the trunk of a tree. The mud had risen nearly to the cuffs of his trousers. Overhead branches flew like clumsily loosed arrows, aimless and deadly.
The hem of Angharad’s gown was black. She said, “Don’t stop walking.”
Effy felt as if she’d been struck by a switch. “I won’t.”
They waded through the mud, through a wasteland of uprooted trees, their trunks split and their roots splayed to the air like men struck down in the heat of battle. The guesthouse was in sight now, its four stone walls seemingly unperturbed by the storm.
When at last they reached it, Angharad threw her weight against the iron-girded door and forced it open. Effy and Preston shuffled through, and Preston shut the door behind them, muffling the sound of the wind.
Effy leaned against the desk, trying desperately to catch her breath. She could not feel her legs under her. When she looked down at her hand, she saw that the tips of her fingers were blue and trembling.
And yet she could not bring herself to care. She stared at the woman in the white dress as she wrung out her hair. Water dripped from her slim body and pooled decorously on the floor.
Of all things to do, Preston had begun pacing. He walked back and forth between the door and the desk, stopping to look Effy up and down, and on his second trip, when he noticed Effy’s blue fingers, he took both of her hands in one of his, raised them to his mouth, and blew on them.
“I won’t let you lose another one,” he said.
There were quite a few more pressing injuries, including the torn skin around Preston’s wrists and the wound on Effy’s head, but none of that seemed to matter in that moment. Effy still felt mostly numb.
“Well,” Effy said at last, a bit dizzily, “when things are meant to rot, they will.”
The strangeness of what she’d said made Preston’s brow furrow, but Angharad’s head shot up, as if she’d been called by name.
This movement seemed to alert Preston to her presence again, and he stopped blowing on Effy’s fingers long enough to say, “Thank you. I—thank you.”
Angharad nodded once, lips pressed thin.
“It really is you.” Preston hesitated, lowering his hands, and Effy’s, down from his mouth. “The mistress of the house. Myrddin’s . . .”
He trailed off, and for a moment everything was silent, even the sound of the wind beating against wood and stone. It was as if the guesthouse, improbably, had been blanketed in a layer of snow.
At last, Angharad inclined her chin.
“Yes,” she said. “I am Angharad Myrddin, née Blackmar. My husband has been dead for six months. My son, I imagine, has died along with his father’s house. But in truth, like his father, he died months ago.”
The grief in her voice was hard to bear. Effy thought of what had become of the Fairy King, now just a heap of dust and ash. Ianto had perished along with him, like wine bled out of a smashed vessel, possessor and possessed both ruined by that one shard of mirror.
Inside Preston’s grasp, her numb fingers curled.
“I didn’t mean to,” Effy said despairingly. “I didn’t mean to kill him, too, I just . . . I didn’t know. Not until it was over. Well, I didn’t believe myself.”
To Preston it must have sounded like nonsense. But Effy knew that Angharad would understand. The older woman hugged her arms around her chest and replied, “There was nothing else to be done. As I said, my son has been dead for a long time. To become the Fairy King’s vessel is to lose yourself, little by little, like water wearing away stone. Ianto fought it as best he could.”
“I’m sorry,” Preston said, blinking. “Do you mean to say that the Fairy King is real?”
Angharad gave him a weary look. “Northerners never understand until they see something with their own eyes. I don’t blame you—I was a naive Northerner once, too, who thought that the stories were just stories and the Fairy King was nothing more than paper and ink and Southern superstition. Real magic is just cannier, better at disguising itself. The Fairy King is devious and secretive, but he is real. Was.”
To hear someone else say it out loud at last—Effy’s knees almost gave way under her.