Effy had folded herself into the most concealed alcove she could find, under a rain-marbled window, and read those arcane books. She had looked particularly for books on fairies, and spent hours thumbing through a tome about fairy rings outside Oxwich, and then another long-dead professor’s ethnography on the Fair Folk he encountered there. Such accounts, centuries old, were written off by the university as Southern superstition. The books she had found had been spitefully shelved under Fiction.
But Effy believed them. She believed them all: the rote academic accounts, the superstitious Southern folklore, the epic poetry that warned against the wiles of the Fairy King. If only she could have studied literature, she would have written her own ferocious treatises in support of her belief. Being trapped in the architecture college felt like being muted, muzzled.
Yet now, standing in the lobby, the library was suddenly a terrifying place. The solitude that had once comforted her had become an enormous empty space where so many bad things could happen. She did not know what, exactly—it was only a roiling, imprecise dread. The silence was a span of time before inevitable disaster, like watching a glass teeter farther toward the edge of a table, anticipating the moment it would tip and shatter. She did not entirely understand why the things that had once been familiar now felt hostile and strange.
She didn’t intend to linger there today. Effy made her way up the vast marble stairs, her footsteps echoing faintly. The arched ceilings and the fretwork of wood across them made her feel as if she were inside a very elaborate antique jewelry box. Dust motes swam in columns of golden light.
She reached the horseshoe-shaped circulation desk and placed two hands flat on the varnished wood. The woman behind the desk looked at her disinterestedly.
“Good morning,” Effy said, with the brightest smile she could muster. Morning was generous. It was two fifteen. But she’d only been awake for three hours, just long enough to throw on clothes and make it to her studio class.
“What are you looking for today?” the woman asked, unmoved.
“Do you have any books on Emrys Myrddin?”
The woman’s expression shifted, her eyes pinching with disdain. “You’ll have to be more specific than that. Fiction, nonfiction, biography, theory—”
“Nonfiction,” Effy cut in quickly. “Anything about his life, his family.” Hoping to endear herself to the librarian, she added, “I have all his novels and poetry already. He’s my favorite author.”
“You and half the university,” the woman said dismissively. “Wait here.”
She vanished through a doorway behind the circulation desk. Effy’s nose itched at the smell of old paper and mildew. From the adjacent rooms she could hear the flutter of pages being turned and the slowly scything blades of the ceiling fans.
“Hey,” someone said.
It was the boy from the college lobby, the one who’d come up behind her to see the poster. His tweed jacket was under his arm now, suspenders pulled taut over a white shirt.
“Hi,” she said. It was more of a reflex than anything. The word sounded odd in all that quiet, empty space. She snatched her hands off the circulation desk.
“You’re in the architecture college, right,” he said, but it didn’t have the tenor of a question.
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“So am I. Are you going to send in a proposal? For the Hiraeth Manor project?”
“I think so.” She suddenly had the very strange sensation that she was underwater. It had been happening to her more and more often lately. “Are you?”
“I think so. We could work on it together, you know.” The boy’s hand curled around the edge of the circulation desk, the intensity of his grip turning his knuckles white. “I mean, send in a joint proposal. There’s nothing in the rules that says otherwise. Together we’d have a better chance at winning the contract. It would make us famous. We’d get scooped up by the most prestigious architectural firms in Llyr the second we graduate.”
The memory of his whispered slur hummed in the back of her mind, quiet but insistent. “I’m not sure. I think I already know what I’m going to do. I spent all of studio class sketching it.” She gave a soft laugh, hoping to smother the sting of the rejection.
The boy didn’t laugh, or even smile back. For a long moment, silence stretched between them.
When he spoke again, his voice was low. “You’re so pretty. You really are. You’re the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen. Do you know that?”