“We can,” Preston said, his voice fierce. “We are not getting trapped here.”
“I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay. We shouldn’t have slept—”
“Effy, stop it.” He reached her, took her hand. “What’s done is done, and I don’t regret—I would never regret . . . it doesn’t matter. We’re taking this box and we’re driving down to Saltney. We’ll get some locksmith to break into it, and . . .”
He trailed off as another peal of thunder reverberated through the little house. Effy glanced over at the box, chin quivering. It looked so huge and heavy, and the padlock gleamed faintly under layers of algae and rust.
Something occurred to her then, with a terrible start. “The letters. The photographs and letters. They’re still up at the house.”
Preston’s face paled. His chest swelled and then deflated again as he drew one heavy, steeling breath. “Damn it. All right. That’s fine; I’ll go up and get them. You just wait in my car.”
“Now you’re being stupid.” Lightning flashed. “I’m coming with you.”
At least Preston had learned not to argue with her. They put on their coats and went to the door.
For some reason, Effy felt a pull of grief as she considered leaving the guesthouse behind. It had served her well, in her time at Hiraeth. The iron on the door had held; the four walls had not come down, even as the water trickled in. Whether he was real or not, it had kept the Fairy King at bay.
A last-minute thrill of fear compelled Effy to grab the rest of the hag stones off the desk and shove them into the pocket of her trousers.
Preston did not even appear to notice. His teeth were clenched, a muscle feathering in his jaw. When she joined him at the door again, he slid his hand into hers.
“I meant what I told you, before,” he said softly. “I want to take care of you. When we get back to Caer-Isel, the horrible professors and the horrible students . . . I never want you to have to weather it all alone again.”
Effy’s throat tightened. “They’re cruel. They’ll be cruel to you, too.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid to care about you, Effy.”
If there had been more time, she would have folded into his arms and let him hold her there until the storm passed. Instead she only squeezed his hand. Together, they pushed open the door.
At first it seemed impossible to take a single step forward. The wind blew past them with such fury that Effy had to close her eyes and put up her hand in front of her face, and even then it felt so brutal and sharp that she thought it might chafe her skin. The rainwater drenched her an instant, soaking through her coat. Leaves and branches were flying through the air at dizzying speeds.
Preston put his hand up, too, and he had to yell to be heard over the wind. “We have to hurry! I won’t be able to drive down if it gets any worse.”
Effy wondered how he would be able to drive down now, but it seemed too defeatist a thought to be worth speaking aloud. Fingers still locked, they charged through the storm, up the path, which was now covered over with fallen trees and which had turned, mostly, to mud.
It was only Preston’s tight grip on her that kept Effy from falling down. When she had to stop because the mud was sucking desperately at her boots, he hauled her forward again and up the small incline.
But reaching the edge of the cliff was worse. From there Effy could see the sea, and the sky, almost indistinguishable in gray-white rage. Together they rose up, and then bore down on the rock, and at last Effy understood why the Southerners, in the very ancient days before the Drowning, believed that there were only two gods: the Sky and the Ocean. The land itself was just something caught and pressed between their warring furies.
She remembered, suddenly, what Rhia had told her: that the Southerners believed the Sleepers were the only thing stopping the second Drowning. That Myrddin’s consecration was keeping them safe. Had she and Preston done this, somehow? Had uncovering Myrddin’s lies whittled away at the magic of the Sleepers, just as Effy had initially feared it would?
Preston yanked her back as a bit of the cliff crumbled beneath her, swallowed up in an instant by the foaming mouth of the sea. Effy couldn’t help but stop and watching while something else—even if it was just nameless, weatherworn stone—was lost to the ages.
Yet in the midst of the chaos, no dark figure stood in the house’s shadow. Of all times, Effy thought it was now that he might come, with the seal between reality and something else broken.