Page 52 of A Study in Drowning

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.

Her sleeping pills and her pink pills lay untouched on the bedside table inside. It grew darker and darker. Over and over again Preston’s words thrummed in her mind: I believe in your grief and your fear. Isn’t that enough?

No. It wasn’t enough. As long as that was the only thing he believed, she would always be just a scared little girl making up stories in her head. She would be infirm, unstable, untrustworthy, undeserving of the life she wanted. They put girls like her in attic rooms or sanatoriums, locked them up and threw away the keys.

Effy waited until it was black as pitch and she couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face. Then she lit a candle she’d brought from the house and held it out into the dense darkness.

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.

She repeated the line over and over again in her mind, and then she spoke it out loud, into the black night and its uncanny silence.

“I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.”

She was not afraid. She needed him to come.

And then, behind the tree line, a flash of white. Wet black hair. Even a sliver of face, pale as moonlight.

All her fear came piling down again, and Effy’s mind thrashed like something caught in the foaming surf. She staggered to her feet, dropping the candle. The wet grass instantly snuffed it out, and she was plunged into darkness.

She felt for the handle of the door, wrenched it open, and hurled herself through. She slammed it shut behind her, the iron brace scraping against stone.

Her heart was pounding against her sternum like a trapped bird. Effy’s knees shook so terribly that she fell forward again, and had to crawl across the cold floor until she reached the bed. Her fingers were trembling too much to light another candle. She just heaved herself into bed and pulled the green duvet over her head.

He had come for her, just like he had promised all those years ago. She had seen him. He was real. She was not mad.

As long as the Fairy King was real, he could be killed, just as Angharad had vanquished him.

If he was not real, there would never be any escape from him.

Effy crammed two sleeping pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry. But even the pills could no longer stop her from dreaming of him.

Eleven