Page 69 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

‘Your eyes though, the pool had nothing to do with that. Your eyes have always been violet. And in the depths, there is fire.’

‘Fire?’ she whispered, aghast.

‘Fire,’ they said firmly.

Well, Frida didn’t know what to do with that, at all. Rosewood box, meet too much information. She scrubbed her hands over her face, aching for a mirror, and then she peeked up at them. ‘You do trust me then? You didn’t think I was going to betray you? You’re staying because you want to . . . help me?’

They snorted. But she saw the way they’d flushed slightly as well, across the tops of their cheekbones. She couldn’t help the way her heart soared in answer. They trusted her! And then she glared at them and crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest.

‘Well, that makes no difference. You’re not coming with me.’

‘I am,’ they snapped, crossing their own arms just as fiercely.

‘No!’

‘Yes, Frida Rose. I am.’

‘But you’re a fairy! You were born in a tree root,’ she wailed.

‘And you’re a human-not-a-human, dragon-not-a-dragon. It does not matter. I am not going to let you go in there on your own. Can you alter the structures of space, slip through the fabric of reality if you need to?’

Grasping at straws, she lashed out, ‘But what if you’re in the house and you decide in a panic to go through a door? How do I know it won’t almost kill you like it did last time?’

Dian’s eyes blazed, wounded. ‘It won’t,’ they hissed.

‘How do you know?’

‘That place!’ Dian scowled down at the ground, scuffing their big toe through a bit of loose dirt. ‘That room. It was. . . those things you call wards. I don’t understand them still, but pushing my way in was like pushing through a solid wall of malice.’ They glowered at her. ‘It didn’t help that I had to bring you with me, too.’

Frida flushed. ‘Oh.’

Then Dian’s face turned anguished. ‘Let me come. I don’t want to feel . . .’

Frida heard the unspoken word. Worthless.

She closed her eyes again.

When she reopened them, Dian was watching her. And then they grinned.

Moth let out a resigned silken groan.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The full moon was high, the yellow shifting to white cream, licking the imposing stones of Forge House. Listening hard, Frida could hear laughter unspooling through the countless windows, all the panes flung open on the summer heat. She had no idea what time it was, but she could just hear, if she strained her ears, the faint clink of cutlery and the tinkle of wine glasses. As if they were having a party in there or something. She and Dian shared a nervous glance. The fairy definitely looked less confident now but at Frida’s questioning expression, they raised their chin determinedly. The mottled patterns over the strong bones of their face seemed to swim before her.

Somewhere inside her, she knew this whole thing was a terrible idea. She knew that Dian was wrong. Dian shouldn’t trust her, not at all, because she’d been lying to them since the beginning. But the closer they drew to the house, she had to admit that a great sense of warmth was overtaking her, strengthened each time her arm brushed theirs. Because whatever was going to happen, Dian hadn’t wanted to leave her. And besides that, the truth was – she was afraid. Whatever brave words she’d spoken at the pool, she didn’t want to go in this house alone.

Sir Joshua had fought for the rights of extraordinary creatures all his life. She was struggling to conceive of him as someone who would support the corruption and entrapment of magical objects. But she couldn’t help her mind turning over the other LEZites.

There’d been Lord Denver, Sir Joshua’s infamous childhood friend. When it had become common knowledge that he’d made a large portion of his money from plantations in the Caribbean and had been actively involved in the transatlantic slave trade, Management had quickly removed his portrait from his place next to Gladstone in the café. The portrait hadn’t been there when Frida, Antony and Hamish had started as keepers, but when they’d learnt of it, they’d gone on a deep dive to see if there were any other dire secrets in the LEZ’s past.

They’d been phenomenally relieved to learn that Sir Joshua had argued furiously with Denver in parliament, clashing over the bill to abolish slavery. And whilst most of the other LEZites had been blindingly rich, they hadn’t found any other true red flags, not like Lord Denver. Or had they? Perhaps, as bright-eyed keepers fresh out of the training program, dazzled by Izzy and drunk on the fumes of manure, they hadn’t looked all that hard.

She remembered that there’d been an article about William Cliff, a newspaper editor, claiming that he’d been a spy for the East India Company, the notorious British colonising machine that had dominated trade routes and controlled huge parts of the Indian subcontinent. Edward Caval, who’d travelled with Sir Joshua on the expedition to rescue the terracotta dragon, had been a renowned collector of pornographic drawings – high end, but still. Laurence Harding, a poet, and Sir Joshua’s alleged secret lover, had written countless books extolling the sublime power of the extraordinary, including sonnets to Fireheart that were believed to be some of the greatest in British history. However, Antony had found one poem Harding had written that described his dream to kill the last white rhino in Africa. And the sisters. Frida glanced at the serpentine lake, glittering in the distance. None of the sisters had tried to release their kelpies. Only Jane. Why hadn’t she questioned that?

The truth was, what did she really know about any of them, beyond their elaborate portraits? She pushed away the sense that reality was suddenly no more than a piece of weak glass, and steeled herself with the knowledge that nothing was simple, least of all history. The only real answers lay inside these stone walls to her left.

‘This way,’ she managed to whisper.