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Which meant—
The figure they’d been chasing through the fog cut across them.
Markham. Markham was here.
“Jules—” Hawthorn started.
But his voice didn’t reach her. Her vision went black, and she bolted awake in the glade a second later.
CerridwenArdencourthadneverleft Faerie. She had not abandoned her daughter, she was not still alive somewhere in the mortal realm.
She had fallen off a cliff sixteen years ago. Her husband had gone back to court and told everyone she’d left.
And they’d believed him.
Why wouldn’t they? Cerridwen had been upset for months, years, even. She told several people she wanted to leave. They’d seen her grow quieter and more withdrawn.
And they were not used to lies.
Juliana ran through the valley, ignoring the swirling memories that raced up to greet her. What hold could they have over her now, when the present was her nightmare?
She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s dead.
Had Markham killed her? It was difficult to say, exactly. He certainly held himself responsible.
But why lie? Why say she’d run away? Why not say she’d just fallen? Why lead Juliana to believe her mother had left her, to grow her life around that lie, to let it fester at the heart of her?
Markham had been wrong that day on the mountain. She could hate him. She did right now.
It didn’t take long to reach him, not at the speed he was taking, slow and dawdling, almost like he was savouring the visions that were conjured.
Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe it was some form of punishment.
She caught up with him at the end of the valley, childish images of herself swirling around the path. Days she laughed with him. Days when they were still a family.
Gone, gone forever. Smoke from a fire that had long since gone out.
He must have known she was following by this point, but he did not stop. He continued out of the valley and down the slope, disappearing into the trees, down towards a series of caves beside a short waterfall.
Juliana had never come here before. She dimly remembered some tale of horrors beyond the valley, horrors she’d never pressed.
She didn’t think of them now. She followed him down to the water’s edge, to a cave behind the sheet of water.
Crystals lined the walls, casting faint blue light along the stone, like memories of moonlight. Something glowed in the back of the cave, glassy and white. Another crystal? It was the size of—
Of a coffin.
Something lay suspended in the watery glass, someone with light brown hair tinged with red, with a face painfully like Juliana’s own.
Mother.
Markham stood over her still, inert form, his fingers brushing the surface of the crystal. Around the coffin were markings on the floor, candles worn to stubs, bowls of herbs, strange effigies—bones and wood all etched with runes.
What had he been doing here?
He did not look up when Juliana approached, but walked around the room instead, relighting candles.
“You saw, didn’t you?” he said, voice soft. “In the valley. Somehow. You saw what happened to her. What… what I did.”
