The revelation unsettled Myers, less for the change in faerie society than for the loss of an authoritative voice to tell him yea or nay. This was the sort of question that ought to be answered by someone official—but it was also a question that could not be left until later, after the fae had decided how they would proceed.
He might as well ask Hodge. “Very well. I believe you are aware of the London Fairy Society, and the Goodemeades’ plan for it?” Hodge nodded. “They had, of course, assumed the city would be mostly deserted of fae, with the remaining few largely scattered, and that announcing their presence to the general populace would therefore create trouble only for themselves and their associates. Given your recent miracle, however…”
“It ain’t so simple,” Hodge finished. “More than you know, guv. You got any notion what’s ’appened, with the new palace?” Myers shook his head. Apprehension meant he was making but slow progress on his own pie, though Hodge managed to gulp down healthy bites during pauses. “Anchored it to the idea of London, didn’t they? Now it’s everywhere. Next to London. All around it. Inside it. Step to the left, and you’re there. So says Abd ar-Rashid, anyway, and ’e’s the sort of cove to trust on this.”
Myers’s appetite vanished entirely, though whether it was from fear or excitement, he couldn’t have said. “And with the dreams so many had that night…”
“Won’t be long before they starts puzzling it out,” Hodge said. “Ain’t ’ad nobody wander in yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Not to mention there’s ’alf a dozen constables as saw some bloody peculiar things in West Ham not long ago, and no telling ’ow long they’ll stay quiet.”
“In that case,” Myers said, “I hope it is not too presumptuous of me to suggest that the Goodemeades and the London Fairy Society should proceed with their plan? Suitably modified, of course, for the circumstances—but I had thought to present some introductory information to the Society for Psychical Research, who would take a very great interest in this matter. I—I cannot promise the results will be entirely positive—”
Hodge waved it away with gravy-stained fingers. “Ain’t going to be, and we knows it. More like bleeding chaos. But it was that or leave, so…” He shrugged. “Them as doesn’t like it can live quiet somewhere else, or push off to Faerie. Same as they would ’ave done anyway.”
It wasn’t quite that simple, of course; as soon as it became public knowledge there were faeries in London, curiosity seekers would be poking under every hedgerow and hill in England. Likely elsewhere, too. Myers imagined there would be no little resentment of London’s fae for that. But for better or for worse, that was the consequence of their decision, and refusing to face it would not improve anything.
“I will consult with the rest of the Society, then—the London Fairy Society,” he clarified. “And, of course, take suggestions as to how you, or rather they, wish to make their debut. But it should be done swiftly.”
Hodge nodded and drank down the last of his beer. “I’ll ’elp as much as I can.”
Myers dropped a shilling onto the table and rose, intending to begin work immediately—he had taken a room in a hotel nearby—but hesitated. “If I may ask one other question?”
The former Prince gestured for him to go on.
“During the meeting where the notion for the Ephemeral Engine was drafted, I believe I saw a young lady of my… acquaintance.” The word stuck in his throat. Myers had not gone home to Cambridge since that inexplicable day in Paddington Station, when Louisa Kittering vanished from not two feet away. Confused and shattered, he had clung to what sent him on that disastrous journey to London in the first place: the notebook, with its record of ideas he did not remember. That led him back to the Goodemeades, and to the meeting down below, and somewhere in between the two, his feelings for the young woman had vanished as completely as the young woman herself. And with as little explanation.
Into the pause, Hodge suggested, “Eliza O’Malley?”
“What?” Myers said, startled. Ah, yes—the Irishwoman. Though I thought her English, when I saw her in Mrs. Chase’s house. “No, Miss Louisa Kittering. She was sitting with a faerie woman—”
“I know the one you mean. And I’d wager it’s the faerie woman you actually need. I’m done ’ere,” Hodge said, rising from his seat like a old gaffer with aching joints. “I’ll show you where she is.”
Oakley Street, Chelsea: October 6, 1884
Had Cyma felt a whit less pity for Hodge, broken and scarred as he was by his long ordeal as Prince, she would have thrown her shoe at him for bringing Frederic Myers to see her.
She had successfully avoided him in the Academy, hurrying Louisa Kittering away before the man could escape his fellow scholars and come after the girl. But while Hodge had lost his authority, he hadn’t lost the habit of paying attention to what went on around him; he knew about her brief tenure as a changeling, and would not let her escape its consequences so easily. He ran her to ground in Chelsea, where she and Louisa had taken refuge with Lady Wilde, and then he left her and Myers alone.
She felt awkward in ways she never would have believed possible. Though her changeling face had gone, the memories stayed, of caring so intensely what he thought of her. Of loving him.
Only the memory of that love, though. Not the passion itself. Cyma’s heart was her own—and so was the choice to withhold it.
“I don’t understand,” Frederic Myers said, his sad eyes clouded with pain and confusion; and because she remembered caring for him, but did not crave his love anymore, Cyma told him the truth.
All of it, from Nadrett onward. Haunting him as Annie Marshall, keeping his grief alive. Surrendering him to the Goblin Market master, to be used, broken, and discarded. Encountering him once more at the London Fairy Society, where she had gone to seek out someone who might be persuadable to a changeling trade; taking the place of Louisa Kittering, and only then finding that what had been mere faerie infatuation, a fascination with his imagination and his grief, bloomed without warning into an obsession.
Through it all, she could not help but absorb every detail of his reactions: the incredulity, surprise, anger, and hurt. It was a relief, to be able to enjoy that rise and fall, without having her own emotions shackled to his.
“You are a monster,” Frederic Myers whispered, when she brought the story to its close.
Cyma shrugged gracefully. “Undoubtedly I seem so to you. I am a faerie, sir; I am not human.” For all the sympathy she once thought she had for them—perhaps it would be better to say interest in them—in the wake of her changeling experiences, she was glad to be herself again.
“To the best of my knowledge,” he said with biting precision, “a faerie nature does not require one to be heartless. You have my forgiveness for those actions you took while under the fist of your former master—but what, pray tell, justifies your deeds since then? Charming me into an affection I did not naturally feel, and estranging me from my wife? The most infamous trull, ma’am, would shame to use your methods.”
She would not have them to use. But Cyma did not want to deal with the fury that might result if she said it, so instead she told him, “I did not know how else to respond. The panic I felt at the thought of not having you made any method seem reasonable, so long as it produced results.”