Effy hated that she couldn’t tell right from wrong, safe from unsafe. Her fear had transfigured the entire world. Looking at anything was like trying to glimpse a reflection in a broken mirror, all of it warped and shattered and strange.
Preston had said all he cared about was the truth. Who better, then, to tell her whether her fear was justified? She felt, somehow, that he could be trusted with this.
All that time in the car and he had never touched her. In fact, he had moved about her, around her, in a very careful sort of way, as if she were something fragile he did not want to risk breaking.
Effy held her breath and opened the door slowly. It creaked like the rest of the house, an awful squeal like a dying cat. She was expecting to see Preston sitting behind Myrddin’s desk, head bent over a book.
But the room was empty, and Effy felt a thud of disappointment. She let her gaze wander across the scattered papers and old books, the cigarettes lining the windowsill, the blanket thrown over the shredded chaise longue. She looked at the chaise for a moment, trying to imagine Preston sleeping there.
It made her smile a little bit to think about it. His long legs would dangle over the edge.
Feeling more curious and emboldened, she moved toward the desk. It had been Myrddin’s, though she could no longer imagine him sitting there—Preston was all over it. His books were lying open like clamshells, water stains yellowing their pages. The Poetical Works of Emrys Myrddin, 196–208 AD was open to the page with “The Mariner’s Demise.” Effy traced her finger over the words, thinking of Preston doing the same. Had she imagined the reverence in his tone, or did he feel passionately about Myrddin after all?
There were papers strewn about, some balled up or folded, others just crumpled and then smoothed flat again. Many had ragged edges, as though they’d been ripped out of a notebook. Effy looked for Preston’s notebook, but she didn’t see it. His pens were scattered around, irresponsibly uncapped.
It was funny now, how she had assumed he would be fastidious and precise in all his work. Even she didn’t leave her pens uncapped like some kind of barbarian.
Effy was aware that she was snooping, but she didn’t care. She smoothed some of the papers flat. Most of them were written in Argantian, which she couldn’t read, though she did pause to study Preston’s handwriting. It was tight and neat, the same way it had looked in the library logbook, but not necessarily elegant. He had a funny way of drawing his g’s, two circles stacked like a headless snowman. Effy bit her lip because it seemed like a silly thing to smile at, even though it did charm her.
She unfolded another paper, this one written in Llyrian.
Proposed thesis title? Execution of the Author: An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Major Works of Emrys Myrddin
Part one: present theory of false authorship, starting with ??
Part two: cryptographic evidence—ask Gosse for samples
Part three: letters, diary entries—use nearest mimeograph, in Laleston?
The list went on for quite a bit longer, but Effy’s mind stopped on the first line. Execution of the Author. With trembling fingers, she turned the paper over. Preston had drawn some aimless sketches in the margins and scrawled some slapdash words, repeating their way down the page.
She was staring at his marginalia in shocked disbelief when the door creaked open.
“What are you doing?” Preston demanded.
Effy crumpled the paper at once, heart pounding. “I could ask you the same.”
Her voice sounded more certain than she felt. Preston had a mug of coffee in one hand, and his lithe fingers curled around it so tightly that his knuckles were white. That same muscle feathered in his jaw. Effy remembered how guarded he had been when Ianto showed her the study, how quickly he had put his notes away when she joined him in the booth yesterday.
Now she knew why he’d been so careful to hide his work.
“Effy,” he said gravely. He still hadn’t moved from the threshold, but his eyes were darting around behind his glasses.
“‘Execution of the Author,’” she read aloud in a quavering voice. “‘An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Major Works of Emrys Myrddin.’ This is your thesis?”
“Just wait a second,” Preston said, an edge of desperation to his words. Effy found she quite liked the idea of him begging her, and a little heat rose in her cheeks at the thought. “I can explain everything. Don’t go running off to Ianto.”
Her cheeks heated further. “What makes you think I would run to Ianto?”
Preston paced toward her slowly, letting the door groan shut behind him. Effy’s heart was beating very fast. She remembered what the shepherd had told her, about the Fairy King in his disguises, and in that moment she thought she could see a bit of that wickedness in Preston, his eyes narrowed and his chest swelling.