“Effy,” Preston said softly. “I’m sorry. You didn’t have to tell me.”
“My mother did come back for me, in the end,” she said in a rush. “And she felt so enormously guilty for leaving me. She even gave me a good saint’s name. I feel sorry for the other changeling children, named after Belphoebe or Artegall.”
“That isn’t right, Effy.” Preston’s voice was low but firm, and he met her gaze unrelentingly. “Mothers aren’t supposed to hate their children.”
“What makes you think she hated me?” Now she did feel angry, not because he hadn’t believed her, but because he had no right to judge her mother—a woman he’d never even met. “Like I said, I was a terrible child. Any mother would’ve been tempted to do the same.”
“No,” Preston said. “They wouldn’t.”
“Why do you always have to be so certain you’re right?” Effy tried to imbue her words with venom, but she just sounded desperate, scrambling. “You don’t know my mother, and you hardly know me.”
“I know you well enough. You aren’t terrible. You’re nothing close. And even if you were a difficult child—whatever that means—there’s no justification for your mother wanting you dead. How did your mother expect you to live with that, Effy? To go on as normal knowing that she once tried to leave you out in the cold?”
She swallowed. Her ears were ringing; for a moment, she thought it was the bells from below the sea, the bells of those drowned churches. If she had had one of her pink pills with her, she would have taken it.
Her mother had gotten her those pills for a reason, so Effy could live with it, so she could go on as normal knowing that she’d once been left for dead. Her mother had pulled Effy right from the Fairy King’s grasp, leaving just a finger behind. That was love, wasn’t it?
“You said you believe in ghosts,” she said thickly. “What’s so different about this?”
“I said I believed in the horror or desire that might conjure one,” Preston said. His eyes shifted, a muscle pulsed in his throat. “I can’t tell you I believe in the Fairy King, Effy. But I believe in your grief and your fear. Isn’t that enough?”
She hadn’t even told him the worst thing of all: that the Fairy King had never truly left her. If she told Preston she had seen the Fairy King in the car with Ianto, he would realize he had made a terrible mistake in trusting her to help him. He would never believe another word she said.
Her eyes pricked with tears, and she swallowed hard to keep them from falling. “No,” she said. “It’s not enough. You are being rude. You’re being mean. It’s not—no one believed Angharad, either. And because no one believed her, the Fairy King was free to take her.”
Preston inhaled. For a moment she thought he might argue, but there was no petulance on his face, no vitriol. He looked almost grief-stricken himself.
“I’m sorry for being rude,” he said at last. “I wasn’t trying to be. I’m only trying to tell you . . . well, I was trying to say you deserve better.”
With a sudden shock like a rush of cold seawater, Effy found herself thinking of Master Corbenic.
“You deserve a man, Effy,” Master Corbenic had told her once. “Not one of these awkward, acne-spotted boys. I see the way they look at you—with their leering, mopey eyes. Even if it isn’t me you want, in the end, I know that you’ll find yourself in the arms of a man, a real man. You’d exhaust these spineless boys. You need someone to challenge you. Someone to rein you in. Someone to keep you safe, protect you from your worst impulses and from the world. You’ll see.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, forcing the memory to dissipate. She didn’t want to think of him. She would rather think of the Fairy King in the corner of her room.
But when she opened her eyes, there was no Master Corbenic. No Fairy King. There was only Preston standing before her, his gaze taking her in carefully, tenderly, as if he was worried that even his stare might chafe.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she bit out.
“All right,” he said gently. But his eyes never left her.
She did not linger at Hiraeth that night. She did not want to speak to Preston, and she certainly didn’t want to speak to Ianto. Instead, when the sun humbled herself to the encroaching darkness, Effy retreated toward the guesthouse.
The air was cruelly cold and the grass wet from an earlier sprinkling of rain. Effy buttoned her coat all the way up to her throat and wrapped her scarf around her neck three times, hiding her mouth and nose behind the wool fabric. Then she slid down against the door to the guesthouse until she was seated in the grass, knees pulled up against her chest.