The thought flashed that this was what taking chances was—you always thought in the back of your mind that doing the right thing would lead you down the right path to the right outcome. But when it came down to it, you might still fail, and everything might end in disaster. Faith in your decision did not mean that the best was going to happen.
Color leaked into Jane’s sight and she froze, watching the clearing now with full vision.
In the green-lit clearing, the little girl was both there and not there, shimmering like the gold and sapphire scarves of light that whisked around her. The old instinctive fear ran sharp and hot through Jane; her fingers curled, everything tensed, and her face was on fire.
That was not just Dorie, and she was not imagining things.
That was the fey.
Chapter 14
Attack
The fey that hadn’t been seen in five years.
The fey that would destroy you to claim your form—and you with no way to kill them in their natural shape.
There was little Jane could do without a weapon. No way to even protect herself without iron. She knew this in her bones like she knew how to breathe. And yet she staggered to her feet, stumbled into the clearing, her human instinct sure she should do something to protect her little girl. The shimmers of blue-orange fey coalesced into one form, a form with a heartbreaking female face that curled in the air around Dorie.
The fey looked at her. And then a wall of black fear swept over Jane, swept in through her face, and it was the nameless terror of her nightmares.
It was a fey attack, though she had never heard of one like this.
There was a strange feeling all through her—fear and attack all mixed up together—and Jane felt as though her thoughts were being scrambled away from her and into something else, some other thing.
No, she protested, no—and she recoiled from it, while simultaneously it seemed to be recoiling from her. Disgust—revulsion—distaste—ugly, ugly—pull back, pullbackpullback … The attack of fear fell away, and Jane still stood, as the fey surrounded the translucent Dorie.
Jane made her shaky legs go forward, heart galloping a mile a minute. She groped in her pockets for a nonexistent feyjabber, pushed her way into the clearing. Dorie stood in a circle of grey stones, a circle with a wall of hard air that Jane’s fingers would not go through. “Are you all right, Dorie?” Her voice was remarkably steady.
Shimmering, Dorie came loose from the fey’s encircling light, bounced through the hard air past the stones to Jane, sweeping through her. Jane felt the touch thrum through her body like the pattering of rain, a distinctly opposite feeling from fey invasion. “My pretty lady,” Dorie said, and Jane felt those words like a smile deep in her body. Dorie bounced back to the fey, cradled herself in that light.
The fey’s imaged face was calm after that first attack. Disturbingly calm, like the destroyed porcelain doll. She observed Jane. Studied the war-torn face that her people had caused. Her voice, when she spoke, was high and throbbed somewhere in Jane’s skull. “You. Must leave us. It is my child.”
“No,” said Jane. “She is human.” She remembered what Edward had said. “Just because you stole her mother’s body doesn’t make Dorie yours.” She didn’t know why, but again she tried to take a step forward, as if trying to fight a fey without shielding or feyjabbers—madness. The fey had weapons with which they could destroy her in an instant. Wasn’t her cheek a reminder of that failed attempt?
The fey said, “My small part-of-me,” in a voice that Jane felt rather than heard. The fey blazed up hot and gold and shaming, and Jane despaired, felt herself being frightened from the clearing by the sheer force of fey emotion. Before she could master her own emotions, she was huddled in the brush outside the clearing, weeping at her inability to act.
Steps behind her—Edward coming up, coming past her. Her tears blurred her sight as the light dimmed, died, faded away to nothing. Jane sprang up, temper rebounding high, pushed into the clearing—but the fey was gone.
Dorie lay on the ground inside the stones, a crumpled heap of silk dress and tangled curls. One hand curled around a broken foxglove whose orange petals were lit with fey glow.
“Dorie,” said Edward, and his voice broke on the word. He knelt beside her, but Jane was already there, checking, waiting, dying—finding that slow pulse fluttering in Dorie’s neck.
“She’s breathing,” Jane said, and the tears ran down her ruined cheek. She gently wrested the poisonous foxglove away from the curled fingers, threw it. “Dorie? Can you hear me?”
Dorie mumbled something and scrunched her eyes tighter.
“Dorie, sweetheart.” Pleading. “Wake up.”
Dorie’s breathing became stronger, more regular, and her pulse strengthened under Jane’s touch. But she did not open her eyes.
Edward cradled his daughter to him and stood. The shadow was dark on his face as he raised his eyes—and looked straight at her face.
Her bare face with no veil, no mask.
Jane swallowed. She knew what he saw. She felt his shock like a whiplash against bare skin. She crushed Dorie’s tiny hand in hers—could not let go of the charge she cared for, even though that meant she was standing a handsbreadth away from Edward.
How could she have thought simply—he can’t love me as he’s never seen my face?
Because he had. If Nina spoke true, he had made her face. Sculpted it, to see her as she should have been.
So no, what she meant was—I’m not normal. He couldn’t care for her when she wasn’t normal. Even the fey had rejected her. Edward and Dorie were not her family. Ugly ugly unclean …
“Jane…,” he said. Only that, holding his daughter close.
“Go,” she said, hollow in her chest. “Lead the way back. You know these woods.” She dropped Dorie’s hand, walked toward him till he had to turn and she could follow, heart constricting in her chest. She retrieved her hat with its torn veil as they followed their path of broken branches and twigs back through the woods. Dorie’s legs hung limply from her father’s arms, jarred back and forth as he strode through the forest. The small limbs seemed as fragile as the porcelain doll’s.
Poule was waiting for them at the edge, her lips set in a grim line. Her careful fingers touched Dorie’s cheek, neck, wrists. “I’ll send for a doctor,” Jane heard her tell Mr. Rochart.
“Doctors won’t help,” said Mr. Rochart. He continued on toward the house with Dorie as though he didn’t know what to do but get her away.
“No, but you’ll feel like you’re doing something,” Poule said. “Let him take her pulse and tell you not to worry.”
Jane searched the back lawn until she saw the elder Miss Davenport. When their eyes met, the girl squealed and turned away. Jane swallowed against the sick feeling inside. And yet … she could not return to hiding behind her wall of iron.
Poule was issuing instructions about the doctor to the nearest temporary servant. She turned to go, and Jane hurried after, fell in beside her. Before she could change her mind she let the words tumble out. “I need your help,” she said. “Please.”
Poule looked up at her, her sharp eyes seeing through Jane’s hastily wrapped veil. “Better bring that book with you to satisfy your last debt. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”
Jane slid The Pirate Who Loved Queen Maud across the green glass tabletop to Poule. The dwarf’s eyes gleamed as she ran her fingers lovingly over the remains of the dust jacket—she could still make out the pirate’s grin as he valiantly fought a busty mermaid riding a sea serpent. With a show of great restraint Poule tenderly tucked the book inside her dressing gown without even cracking it open.