As they stumbled up the path, Hiraeth appeared in the distance, a black bulwark against the gray sky. Maybe Ianto was right; maybe her task had not been insurmountable after all. Maybe there was some old, silent magic protecting it, something not even their discoveries could shatter.
The trees, the mountain ash—despite Ianto’s best efforts—were being torn from their roots. The rowan berries were stripped off their branches and smashed into pulp. All the wards obliterated. Yet still the Fairy King did not appear.
Effy was too bewildered to know whether she should feel relief. Shingles blew off the gabled roof like birds taking flight.
Just as they reached the steps, an enormous tree went flying past them, trailing its chains. Effy staggered back, gasping, and Preston stammered out a curse.
“Saints,” he said over the wind. “I’m starting to think the naturalists were right about the second Drowning.”
Effy didn’t mention the Southern superstitions, or the Sleepers. Her mouth had gone dry and her stomach was roiling with the same ferocity as the sea.
They clambered up the steps and through the door. Preston heaved it shut behind them, while Effy leaned back against the wall, trying to catch her breath.
“If this is a second Drowning,” she said, each syllable carefully and painfully rendered, “what are we meant to do?”
Preston wiped the rainwater from his glasses. “Get out of here as quickly as we can.”
There was nothing else to say. They charged upstairs as around them, the house groaned deafeningly, water bleeding through every crack in the walls and ceiling.
Some of the paintings along the stairwell had been shaken down; the glass holding the Fairy King had shattered, and he stared up at her with his colorless eyes from among the broken shards.
The frame no longer bound him. Effy felt a jolt of fear before Preston hurried her along again, beneath the archway carved with the faces of Saint Eupheme and Saint Marinell. The archway was crumbling, their wooden faces rotted. No saints to protect her now.
Your prayers are no use, the shepherd had said. They won’t protect you against him.
The second floor was worse. The walls were drenched with water, wallpaper peeling away in long tongues of faded green. All the naked glass bulbs had broken, and the floorboards creaked beneath them with every step.
Perilously, they made their way toward the study, while half the ground behind them fell away, ancient wood finally crumpling under the weight of so much water.
“It’s all right,” Preston was mumbling, more to himself, Effy thought, than to her. “It’s all right, it’s all right . . .” He flung open the door to the study.
Ianto stood in front of Myrddin’s desk. He had a length of chain thrown over his shoulder, and his musket was lying on the desk behind him. He was drenched, shirt sticking to his body, black hair dripping puddles onto the floor.
Effy froze, stomach lurching with dread.
Ianto said, very calmly, “Welcome back.”
“Wh—what are you doing here?” Preston stammered out.
“Well,” said Ianto slowly, “just last night, as I was about to crawl peaceably into bed, I got the most unexpected phone call from an old friend. Blackmar is ancient and half-demented, and at first I thought I was going to have to silently nod along to the ramblings of a toothless lunatic. But he actually began to tell me that recently he had hosted some unexpected guests, two students from the university in Caer-Isel. He said they told him that they had been working on a project centered around Emrys Myrddin, and had asked him quite a lot of suspicious questions. Specifically about the publication of Angharad.”
Effy’s legs began to go numb. Then her arms, then her whole body. She could scarcely feel Preston’s fingers gripping hers.
“How curious,” Ianto went on, putting one hand under his chin in an exaggerated gesture of perplexity. “Curious, curious, curious—that’s what I said to Blackmar, when I told him that I was also playing host to two students from the university in Caer-Isel, one of whom professed an interest in my father’s life and his works. I was utterly taken aback by Blackmar’s insistence that these wholesome students, whom I had graciously allowed into my home, could have any nefarious intentions. I don’t like to assume the worst of people, you know. But I also don’t like being taken for a fool. So I decided to come over to the study myself and ask—and oddly enough, I found it empty.”
His eyes. They were crisp and translucent, no more murk. They were sharp enough to cut and clear enough to see her reflection.