Page 91 of A Study in Drowning

Angharad nodded. “My father delivered me to Emrys like a horse that had been bought and sold. We were married in a matter of weeks. The book came out not long after that. Marlowe decided the title.”

“I thought it was just cheekiness on Myrddin’s part, calling the book she and her.” Preston flushed. “And I thought, initially, that Blackmar wrote it. I thought that was the conspiracy we were trying to uncover.”

“The letters.” Effy blinked, as if newly prodded from slumber. “Preston, remember? There were some strange letters, allegedly from Myrddin, only his name was spelled wrong. It’s what made you think at first that they might be forgeries.”

“Oh,” Angharad said. “About a decade after the book was published, some intrepid reporters began sniffing around. In a fit of paranoia, Emrys burned all of his letters and ripped pages from his diary. Marlowe was even more paranoid, so he drafted some letters that would be proof of Emrys’s authorship, if it ever came to that. It never did, of course. No one cared to look further. Until . . .”

“Until me.” Preston swallowed, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “And it still took far too long. I’m sorry. Now it feels obvious, like I should have known.”

“Well, you came to the answer in the end,” Angharad said. “Even with the world against you—Marlowe and my father and my son, who was far too much like his father. I must sound as innocent as a child now. But for all my life, those three were my whole world.”

Effy’s voice wavered when she asked, “What about the Fairy King?”

“The Fairy King was all of them,” said Angharad. “Every wanting man has that same wound he can use to slip in. It wasn’t until we were back in the Bottom Hundred, in Hiraeth, that the Fairy King’s hold over Emrys became unshakable. His power was at its peak here. Still, there were years of wondering—would the man entering the threshold be my husband, imperfect as he was, or would he be the Fairy King, cruel down to his marrow? It was almost easier when the Fairy King took him over entirely. Then I knew to expect his viciousness, and I had my little mortal tricks.”

“The mountain ash, the rowan berries, the horseshoe over the door,” Effy recounted, realization dawning on her. “All of that wasn’t to keep the Fairy King away. It was to keep him trapped here.”

That was why Ianto had so hurriedly rushed her back to Hiraeth the day they visited the pub, back to the fetters that Angharad had placed on the house, before the Fairy King could take him over entirely. Effy felt another wave of sorrow. Ianto really had been fighting the Fairy King, as best he was able.

I had to bring her back, she remembered Ianto saying. Isn’t that what you wanted?

He hadn’t been talking to a ghost at all. He’d been talking to the Fairy King, to the voice inside his own head, invisible and inaudible to anyone else. And he’d been talking about Effy: the Fairy King could not allow Ianto to let her slip from his grasp.

“Emrys—or the Fairy King—smashed all the mirrors,” Angharad said. “And of course forbade me from buying new ones. His power was enough to keep me here, and my mortal trickery was enough to keep him here. When my husband died, I thought I might at last be free of him. But the Fairy King found a new vessel. My son.”

Grief entered Angharad’s voice again, like the sea flooding a tide pool.

“I’m so sorry,” Preston said again. “For that . . . and for everything you’ve endured.”

Angharad’s smile was sad and gentle. “I’m sorry, too. For what my son did, for what the Fairy King did, for what I couldn’t stop them from doing. He did fight, you know—Ianto. He could loosen the Fairy King’s bonds sometimes, long enough to leave the house, but eventually, always, the Fairy King would begin to take over again and Ianto would have to hurry back. To trap him here again, in my little web, in my orchard of mountain ash.”

Ianto had driven up the cliffs in such a vicious hurry, even as he had been losing the battle. She had seen the Fairy King in the car beside her. It had not been her imagination, a hallucination. The pink pills could not have stopped him—and neither, in the end, could Ianto.

“I could tell he was fighting it,” Effy said. “He wasn’t entirely a monster.”

Angharad lowered her gaze. “There were times, I confess, that I could have gotten my hands on a mirror. Yet I knew I could not bring myself to use it against my own son, even as I saw the Fairy King’s hold on him grow more complete with every passing day. I invited you here, Preston, in hopes that you might uncover the truth. But you . . .” She turned toward Effy, eyes dim. “The Fairy King wanted a bride, and I didn’t know how to keep you safe from him.”

“The guesthouse,” Effy realized, and it seemed almost a silly thing now, with the storm battering the walls and the embers burning with their waning light. “You did protect me. You ordered Ianto to have me stay here.”

Angharad appeared almost bashful. “I thought you might take it as an offense. I wasn’t sure it would be enough to keep you safe—but still, it was something.”

It had not been Myrddin protecting her as Effy had initially thought; he had not put the iron on the door. It had been Angharad this whole time—everything had been Angharad.

Effy felt tears prick at her eyes. Just as Angharad had said, she felt like some enormous weight had been lifted, and the lightness of her limbs was unfamiliar. Like the buoyancy of water. “Thank you.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for.” Angharad turned to Effy now, green gaze meeting green gaze. “I had decades to learn.”

“It’s not just that,” Effy said. “You have no idea—I’ve read your book a hundred times, maybe more. It was a friend when I didn’t have any. It was the only thing that said I was sane when the whole world was telling me I was mad. It saved me in more ways than I can count. Because I knew no matter how afraid I felt, I wasn’t truly alone.”

Angharad’s eyes were shining now, too. “That’s all I wanted, you know,” she said. “When I was young—when I was your age. I wanted just one girl, only one, to read my book and feel that she was understood, and I would be understood in return. Writing that book was like shining a beacon from a lighthouse, I suppose. Are there any ships on the horizon? Will they signal back to me? I never got the chance to know. My husband’s name was all over it, and his was the only ship I could see.”

“I saw it,” Effy whispered. “I see it. And it saved me.”

“Well,” Angharad said, “you saved me, too. The Fairy King is gone. No matter what happens now, I’m free.”

Tears were falling down Effy’s cheeks, and even though she tried, she couldn’t stanch them. The warmth in her chest spread through her blood, all the way to her fingers and toes. Her missing ring finger didn’t ache anymore. That phantom, too, had been banished.

“I’m so sorry,” Preston said quietly, “but we couldn’t get it in time—Myrddin’s diary, the letters. The, uh, photographs.” His cheeks reddened. “The two of us know the truth, but the rest of it has been lost with the house.”