All Good Things

by Emma Newman

  “Is that actually her heart?”

  “Yes, your majesty. It’s a very powerful curse.”

  “Can you restore her, now the Prince is no longer here?”

  “I can, if you permit it, your majesty. I would be able to summon her, as I once summoned you, and restore her fully when she is here.”

  “Do it.”

  Iris moved over to the case and smashed it so swiftly that Will didn’t realise what he’d done until he heard the glass break. Iris moved close to the heart and for a moment Will thought he was going to kiss it, but instead the Fae whispered into it. The frost didn’t melt, but Will was certain he saw a faint glow coming from inside the ruby heart.

  Iris moved to stand in front of a huge mirror set in a gilded frame. It shimmered and Will saw Petra touching the glass from the other side, her cheeks flushed. Iris reached through and took her hand, guiding her into Exilium.

  “You’re familiar,” she whispered. “But I can’t…I can’t remember.” She noticed Will and curtsied. “I don’t understand. Is this Exilium?”

  Will nodded. “My circumstances have changed since I last saw you. There’s no need to be afraid.”

  She smiled at him and then Iris, her hand still resting in his. “I’m not.”

  “Allow me to restore you,” Iris said to Petra with uncharacteristic reverence and warmth. As he guided her across the room, Will marvelled at how gently Iris held her hand. The Fae didn’t take his eyes off her.

  Petra gasped at the sight of the heart and her free hand flew to her chest, as if somehow she knew it belonged to her.

  “Take it from the pedestal,” Iris said, letting go of her hand.

  Approaching the heart, Petra frowned. “This is the reason why her magic didn’t kill me when she attacked Ekstrand…” she whispered to herself. “My heart was elsewhere.”

  She picked it up and instinctively held it close. Iris moved closer to her and then breathed over the heart, whispering a Charm as he did so, and the frost covering the ruby started to melt. Iris cupped his hands over Petra’s and gently pushed the heart towards her chest, whispering all the while. The heart, still appearing to be made of ruby, started to glow, and Will even thought he saw it beat, before it started to disappear. It was as if it were being pushed into her, somehow able to pass through her dress and skin.

  A moment after her hands and his were pressed flat against her chest Petra convulsed, her back arching and her eyes and mouth wide open as she cried out. Iris stepped forwards, gathering her into his arms as she suddenly relaxed and seemed to melt against him. They kissed and a rich dark blond colour swept through Iris’s white hair from roots to tip, a streak of dark blue appearing moments later.

  “Iris! Iris, my love, my darling!” Petra wept, stroking his hair.

  Concerned she’d been Charmed, Will said “Iris, wait outside, I want to speak to Petra.” Iris looked at him as if Will had tried to stab him, tears glittering on his cheeks, but then he separated himself from Petra and bowed.

  “No! Please, no, we’ve been apart for so long!” Petra said, reaching for Iris. The Fae stepped away from her and left the room at a quick march.

  “I need to know you aren’t being controlled by him,” Will said. “I want you to be truthful with me.”

  Petra sighed. “Only as much as he is controlled by me. We love each other. Deeply.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t trust the Fae.” Will snapped his fingers again and when the faerie appeared, he pointed at Petra. “Tell me if she is under the influence of any magic.”

  The faerie flew over, looked into Petra’s eyes, licked her hand, and sucked on a strand of her hair. “No, your majesty. Would you like her to be?”

  “No,” Will said, and waved it away. “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “How could you love Iris? He’s…monstrous.”

  Petra pulled a chair away from the nearby dressing table and sat down. “Not the Iris I know and love. He’s gentle and loving and loyal. We’ve been kept apart; perhaps…”

  “He ruined my life!” Will yelled. “His demands destroyed my marriage!”

  “Your majesty?” Petra said softly. “I can only imagine our separation did this to him. And you must understand, our love was forged before Exilium ever was. I thought he was an angel the first time I met him. The second time I thought he was a demon, the third, a Sorcerer. He was cold and frightening but he saved me, a mere miller’s daughter, from marriage to a stupid king who thought I could spin gold out of straw.”

  “Out of kindness?”

  Petra laughed. “Oh, no, not out of kindness. He got my firstborn in return. Your great-great-great-great-grandfather or thereabouts, fathered by a better king that Iris gave to me. Then Iris and I fell in love and the king…well, he was a tiresome man and died on the battlefield. Iris promised to favour my descendants if I loved only him, and I agreed. It was all my choice. And I want nothing more. I’ve suffered years of service to my love’s enemy, been denied my memory, my will, even my own heart. Please, whatever he’s done, please forgive him.”

  Will sat on the edge of the bed, tired of all the broken lives. For the first time he was able to mend something, to heal a wound instead of inflict one, but the one who’d done the most damage to him would be the one who benefitted most. It felt so unjust.

  But if he punished Iris and banished Petra to Mundanus, what would be achieved? He thought of Margritte and the moment she forgave him for killing her husband. She put a stop to a cycle of revenge that had done nothing more than spread violence and misery. He’d done a lot of that himself. The Rosas, Bartholomew, that poor Tulipa…so many lives damaged or destroyed by his own petty needs. Iris might have been the one who drove him to it, but he’d made many of those choices himself. Perhaps if he’d listened to Cathy sooner, found a way out of that system as she had, Bartholomew would still be alive now, Duke of Londinium, Margritte happy by his side.

  He wanted Cathy back. He had to prove to her that he wasn’t the same man who’d hurt her. And there was no other way to do that than act. He stood and called for Iris, who came back inside.

  “Go, be together, be happy,” Will said. “All I ask is that you end your tyranny over my family, Iris. Support them, but don’t use them. Don’t hurt them or do anything to them that makes them unhappy.”

  Iris came and knelt before him. “Thank you, your majesty. May your merciful reign be long and bring you happiness. I am your faithful servant.”

  Petra curtsied to him. “Thank you, your majesty. We will never forget your kindness.”

  Will dismissed them, waiting for the moment when he felt good about what he’d just done. It didn’t come. And that sense of imperfection in his court rose once more. He summoned the faerie. “Go to Lord Poppy. Tell him to bring me Thomas Rhoeas-Papaver. Immediately.”

  25

  “Where’s the gargoyle now?” Cathy asked Max. As she paced up and down in the living room, he directed his attention elsewhere as he had before, seeing through the gargoyle’s eyes even though it was in the Nether as he and Cathy remained in Sam’s house.

  “Outside the Sorceress’s tower. Do you feel any different?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t stop shaking and I feel sick, but I think that’s just fear.”

  Through the gargoyle’s eyes, Max looked up at the tower, seeing light coming from the topmost room. It sniffed around the door at the base, both of them uncertain whether any wards would be a problem. They’d been able to enter the tower before. Caution and the desire for the most direct route made the gargoyle start to climb the outer wall instead.

  Max wondered if he should try harder to pull the gargoyle back into Mundanus. So many times he’d condemned the Sorcerers for being murderers and yet there was his own soul, going to kill someone. He looked at Cathy, at how pale and terrified she looked. He felt nothing towards her except an intellectual loyalty. They protected each other. Helped each other, when the Sorcerers had threatened their lives. Was this…friendship? He
knew the gargoyle was very fond of her. So he was too, technically speaking. Fond enough to kill another to keep her safe.

  Killing the Sorceress would put an end to their plans, though. “Cathy, which do you value more: your life or seeing the worlds rejoined?” Her eyes became huge, shining with tears. She opened her mouth but no answer came. “That is what this amounts to,” he said. “I’ve tried to pull the gargoyle back, several times, but it’s been getting more independent of late. It started with Kay. I don’t think I can stop it from killing Beatrice, but I could try harder.”

  “I don’t want to die.” She covered her face with her hands, her shoulders rounded with shame.

  The gargoyle started to climb the outside of the tower, its sharp stone claws finding handholds easily.

  “But,” Cathy said, “I’m just one person. Millions of lives would be saved if the Fae balanced the Elemental Court.”

  The gargoyle reached the stone sill of the uppermost window of the tower. It peered over the top, seeing the Sorceress inside standing in front of the glass and lenses as she had the last time they’d seen her there, painting the formula to kill again. The gargoyle took the tracker from between its jaws and after the briefest pause, threw it at the glass.

  “No, stop him!” Cathy said as the glass shattered. “We can’t kill her; she’s the only one who knows how to unsplit the worlds! That’s more important than me.”

  “It’s too late,” Max said, seeing the flash of the tracker’s activation before the gargoyle looked away. “She’s dying.”

  The gargoyle cowered under the sill as a horrific scream cut through the air and then ended abruptly. Max was concerned that Beatrice had somehow escaped, and willed the gargoyle to look. After considerable resistance, the gargoyle finally peeped over the sill again.

  There were bones lying in the middle of the room, an entire skeleton, by the look of it, and a stain on the floorboards below them. Nothing more of the Sorceress remained. The tracker was nowhere to be seen, but as Rupert had told Kay it would, it had indeed destroyed all the flesh in its proximity. After a few moments of staring at the skeleton, the gargoyle spotted a rectangular pile of black dust about the size of the device. It made sense: Rupert would have designed it to be harmless once it had done its job, so he’d be able to go and examine the damage afterwards.

  “She’s dead,” Max said, and Cathy dropped into the armchair to bury her face in one of the cushions.

  There was a book lying open on the floor of the tower room and Max thought of the ones he’d obtained for Cathy. The gargoyle broke the rest of the glass of the window and very slowly reached in with one paw. When nothing terrible happened, it climbed inside cautiously. If there had been a ward protecting the Sorceress from intruders, it certainly wasn’t working now.

  The gargoyle went over to the book, saw a few lines of sorcerous symbols written down, and picked it up. An Opener lay next to it, which surprised both of them. The gargoyle picked that up too, and, avoiding the stain and the bones, pushed it into the wall. It opened a Way into a room that looked very similar to the bedroom Max had been given in Lord Iron’s house. When the gargoyle stepped through and the floorboards creaked above, Max knew it was a shortcut created by the Sorceress between her two residences. Useful.

  His mobile rang. Rupert was displayed on the screen. “Is it Sam?” Cathy said hopefully.

  “No. Rupert.” Max accepted the call and put it on speakerphone.

  “Max! Hey, how’s it going?” The voice was cheerful.

  “How can I help you, sir?” Max said in his usual deadpan.

  “So you tracked that bitch down in the end and avoided the side effects. That’s awesome! Come to Oxenford. I wanna thank you in person. And we need to make plans.”

  “It may take me some time to reach you, sir. Where should I go?” Max said as Cathy frantically shook her head.

  “The Bodleian. Come to the Nether quadrangle. I got some cleaning up to do. See ya soon!”

  Max ended the call.

  “Is he some sort of psychopath?” Cathy asked. “He must know that you heard him kill Kay. Why the hell did you say you’d go?”

  “I need to understand what he is going to do next,” Max replied. “He really is the last Sorcerer in Albion now. Now that Beatrice is dead, he may be the only one who can help us to protect innocents.”

  She nodded. “Just be careful. Call me when you can, okay? And Max,” she rested a hand on his shoulder, “for what it’s worth, thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For caring about me.”

  Uncertain how best to reply, he erred on the side of silence and joined the gargoyle in the hallway. “Keep hold of that Opener,” he said to it. “But give the book to Cathy. We have to go to Oxenford.”

  • • •

  Cathy went over to the fire in Sam’s living room, poked it back into life, and leaned against the mantelpiece, reeling. She’d gone from fearing she’d drop dead at any moment to an uncomfortable mix of relief, guilt, and despair. Although it felt nothing like the death of her father, Beatrice’s death still prodded the same wound. She hadn’t known her well—far from it—and she’d done a lot of things Cathy couldn’t stand. But she’d also been strangely admirable. All that knowledge and skill she’d acquired through sheer bloody-mindedness…if only she hadn’t been so quick to murder people with it.

  But there was another loss that she felt more keenly: the hope of real change. Without Beatrice, the plan to rejoin the worlds was dead in the water. The Nether would go on forever and all of her dreams of true freedom—for herself as well as for the women trapped there—were lost.

  She opened the suitcase Max had brought her and looked at the books recovered from Ekstrand’s library. Could she rejoin the worlds? Cathy groaned. How could she possibly do that? Beatrice had been practising sorcery for hundreds of years and had even developed her own hybrid discipline, whereas she was only just starting to get a grip on fairly basic wards.

  But surely she had to at least try? When she’d first started to plan her original escape from life in the Nether the obstacles had seemed insurmountable, but she’d figured out a way to do it. Cathy cringed. They were incomparable, and she knew it.

  “Cathy, love,” Mrs M said from the door, making her jump. “I’ve just had a call from the gatehouse. They said a bloke called Thomas was there, asking to see you.” She came over, holding out an iPad showing a picture of Tom, standing awkwardly at the gates. “Do you recognise him? Only he said he were yer brother, and I didn’t know if it were true.”

  What was Tom doing here? Had something gone wrong at the ball? Why not phone? “It’s him. Can you tell them to let him in, please?”

  “Jared will escort him over. I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Cathy lurked in the hallway until there was a knock at the front door. “What are you doing here, Tom? Thanks, Jared. Come in, it’s freezing. What’s wrong? You look terrible. Oh God, has someone else died?”

  Tom stepped inside, shivering despite his coat. “You need to come with me to Exilium.”

  “What?”

  “Cat…I don’t know how to say this…”

  “Come to the fire. You look freezing.”

  “Hello, love,” Mrs M smiled at him. “You’re a tall one. You look like you need a bit of apple crumble and custard. I’ll get some for both of you.”

  “That’s Mrs M and she makes the best pies in all the worlds.” She led him to the living room and stoked the fire. “I was expecting you to phone me. What happened at the ball?”

  “Oh. Yes, I suppose I should have phoned ahead,” he said. “The ball…yes…I seem to have become Duke of Londinium and—”

  “Holy shit! What happened to Will?”

  Tom blinked. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was in shock. “He was disowned by the Irises when I exposed your separation. I thought I’d won, Cat. We destroyed them, Aquae Sulis belongs to our aunt and uncle again, and the Irises are banned from the city.
Then I became Duke and Lucy impressed Lord Poppy and won independence for the Californicas, and potentially the entirety of the Colonies.”

  “What? Sit down, tell me everything.”

  “But I’m not here to tell you about any of that,” he said as she gently pulled him down to sit next to her on the sofa. “Oh, Cat, something dreadful has happened. It’s Will…”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No! He’s King of the Fae.”

  For a few moments, there were no words in her head. Then, bubbling up like the times she’d been forced to try and sing at recitals as a child, she started to laugh. It was a horrible, brittle, slightly hysterical sound. “What are you talking about?”

  “He made Lord Poppy summon me there. I’ve seen Will on the Exilium throne, Cat, wearing a crown of oak leaves. I don’t know how it happened—not even Lord Poppy did—but I swear it’s true.”

  The laughter died. “He wants you to take me to him, doesn’t he?”

  Tom nodded. “Immediately.” He gathered her hands in his. “I’m so sorry, Cat. I thought I’d freed you from him. I saw him humiliated and disowned. He left the Guildhall with nothing, not even his name. But now…I don’t know how to protect you. I couldn’t say no to him. I tried. I simply…couldn’t. Even Lord Poppy bowed to him. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I can’t go to him.” Her gaze drifted back to the books. All that knowledge. All that power. All within her reach. If she could just be left alone for a little while, perhaps—

  “If I don’t do this,” Tom said, “I dread to think what Lord Poppy will do. He said he was going to fetch Lucy. Please, Cat, we have to go.”

  Could she ward herself against Will? Was it a matter of simply replacing that clause for the Irises with something meaning the King? She didn’t know how to express that in either Fae or sorcerous magic, though, and her thoughts were woolly with panic.

  Surely there was something she could do to protect herself? She’d given the Opener she’d used in Aquae Sulis back to Max, and she had the awful feeling that if the King of the Fae didn’t want her to leave Exilium, a simple Charm of Openings wouldn’t work. If only she could take Sam with her. Where the hell was he? If only he was at the forge and—“That’s it!” she said, jumping to her feet. “I’ll go with you, but we need to get something first. It’ll be very quick.”