Wren held his breath.
Shrike furrowed his brow at the knuckle-bones.
“What is it?” Wren demanded. “Has she been taken by the fae as well?”
Shrike shook his head. “Miss Flora does not exist.”
Wren’s heart plunged as cold panic flooded his veins. “She’s dead?”
“No.” Shrike raised his head, his expression of mild confusion turning to concern as he caught sight of the stricken look on Wren’s face. “She’s not dead. She doesn’t exist.”
“Well,” said Wren. “I don’t know how it works in the fae realms, but in England that means she’s dead.”
“If she were dead, the bones would say so,” Shrike replied with more patience than Wren probably deserved. “They do not say Miss Flora is dead. They say there is no such creature as Miss Flora.”
“Balderdash,” said Wren.
Shrike raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve met her!” Wren insisted. “I’ve spent the last decade managing her fortune! You’ve seen her yourself—she’s as real as you or I!”
“We met a mortal,” Shrike explained. “A mortal whom you called Miss Flora. Whether that is said mortal’s true identity… the bones don’t seem to agree.”
“Then the girl we know is an impostor?” Wren asked, unable to keep the sardonic tinge from his tone. “From her infancy?”
“Did the mortal you know as Miss Flora name themselves?”
Wren blinked. “Of course not. What infant names itself at birth?”
“Most of them,” Shrike replied.
Wren stared at him. “Did you?”
“How else would I recognize the sound of my true name?”
Wren had no answer for that. Yet, “That may hold true for the fae, but for mortals, I assure you, it is another matter entirely.”
Shrike did not look as though he believed him. “Be that as it may, the mortal you call Miss Flora does not call themselves Miss Flora. If you wish to find them, we must find a way to call them which their essence would recognize.”
Wren didn’t think they had time to go down a list of every name he could think of in the hopes that Miss Flora had given herself the same nickname. “If that’s true, then how did we find Felix?”
“Evidently Felix Knoll had no quarrel with what society chose to call him.”
Wren didn’t doubt Felix lacked the imagination required to name himself something other than what name he’d been given. “And how did you find me before you knew my name was Wren?”
“I did not ask for you by name. I asked the fates to bring me to the one who would secure my victory.”
“Oh,” said Wren. He considered the matter a moment, then added, “Could we ask the bones where to find the young lady whom Felix Knoll would have married, had he lived?”
Shrike cast the bones again, examined them, then shook his head.
Wren supposed that the match may very well have dissolved even if Felix had survived. Another thought occurred to him. “The young lady formerly known as Miss Flora Fairfield, who has now taken her husband’s name.”
The bones continued to deny the existence of such a person.
Wren had thought that solution rather clever—but not clever enough, apparently. He turned his mind to simpler definitions. “The only child of the late Mr and Mrs Fairfield.”
God willing, neither had sired nor borne a bastard prior to their premature demise.
