“All the more reason to stop her. Perhaps she hasn’t bound Eugenia’s power to the tree just yet. We might still save the realms,” he says.
“We?”
“I’m not running away again. That is not my destiny.”
He slips his hand under my chin and tilts it up, and I kiss him first.
“I thought you stopped believing in destiny,” I remind him.
“I haven’t stopped believing in you.”
I smile in spite of everything. I need his belief just now. “Do you think…” I stop.
“What?” he murmurs into my hair. His lips are warm.
“Do you think, if we were to stay in the realms, that we could be together?”
“This is the world we live in, Gemma, for better or for worse. Make of it what you can,” he says, and I pull him to me.
After the weeks of excited preparation for the masked ball, Spence is rather like a balloon that has lost all its air. Down come the decorations. Costumes are packed away in tissue and camphor, though some of the younger girls refuse to give theirs up just yet. They want to be princesses and fairies for as long as they can.
Others, ready for the next party, badger Mademoiselle LeFarge for details of her upcoming wedding.
“Will you wear diamonds?” Elizabeth asks.
Mademoiselle LeFarge blushes. “Oh, dear me, no. Too precious. Though I was given a most beautiful pearl necklace to wear.”
“Will you honeymoon in Italy? Or Spain?” Martha asks.
“We will take a modest trip to Brighton,” Mademoiselle LeFarge says, and the girls are deeply disappointed.
Brigid taps my shoulder. “Missus Nightwing is calling for you, miss,” she says sympathetically, and I am afraid to ask what has provoked her kindness.
“Yes, thank you,” I say, following her beyond the baize door to our headmistress’s solid, staid sanctuary. The only spot of color is on a corner table, where wildflowers spill over the boundaries of a vase, dropping petals without care.
Mrs. Nightwing motions to a chair. “How are you feeling today, Miss Doyle?”
“More myself,” I say.
She rearranges the letter opener and the inkwell, and my heart picks up speed. “What is it? What has happened?”
“You’ve a cable from your brother,” she says, handing it to me.
FATHER VERY ILL STOP WILL MEET YOUR TRAIN AT VICTORIA STOP TOM
I blink back tears. I shouldn’t have pushed as I did at the masked ball. He wasn’t ready for truth, and I forced it on him, and now I fear I have delivered an injury from which he cannot fully recover.
“It’s my fault,” I say, dropping the note on her desk.
“Poppycock!” Nightwing barks, and it is what I needed—a bracing wind at my back. “I shall have Brigid help you with your things. Mr. Gus will drive you to the train station first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“My thoughts are with you, Miss Doyle.” And I think she means it.
On the long walk to my room, Ann runs up to me, out of breath.
“What is it?” I can see the alarm on her face.
“It’s Felicity,” she gasps. “I tried to reason with her. She wouldn’t listen.”
“What do you mean?”
“She went into the realms. She’s gone to be with Pip,” she says, wide-eyed. “Forever.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
WE STAND BESIDE THE HALF-FORMED EAST WING. FIRE-FLIES blink in the trees, and I have to look twice to be certain they are only those harmless insects. The passageway into the realms feels colder to me, and I hurry my steps. The moment we step through the door in the hill, I can feel that something’s not right. Everything’s a bit gray, as if the London fog has rolled in.
“What is that smell?” Ann asks.
“Smoke,” I answer.
In the distance, a large black plume of smoke scars the sky. It is rising from the mountain that houses the Temple and the Caves of Sighs, where the Hajin live.
“Gemma?” Ann says, her eyes wide.
“Come on!” I shout.
We race to the poppy fields. Ash rains down, coating our skin in a fine layer of silver-gray soot. Coughing, we fight our way up the mountain. The path bleeds with crushed poppies. Ann nearly stumbles over the body of an Untouchable. There are more. Their charred corpses line the path to the smoldering Temple. Asha stumbles from the smoking wreckage.
“Lady Hope…”
She sags against me, and I rush her to a rock where the air is not so heavy with ash.