His eyes slitted open blearily, and Dora’s heart jumped in her chest. “This is why I never give anyone a key to my room,” Elias mumbled. “Curse you, what hour is it...”
“Elias, you must listen to me,” Dora told him sternly. “I have been stuck in Hollowvale, along with my other half. The marquess has been buying children from the workhouse masters—from George Ricks, for certain, but probably from the others, as well. I have seen Jane in Hollowvale too, though her name is really Abigail.”
Elias blinked a few times, and Dora saw his golden eyes begin to clear of sleep. “Dora?” he murmured. He sat up sharply, now fully awake. He reached out for her with his hand, but the gesture went through her just as her fingers had done with him before. His brow knitted, and he looked back towards Dora’s body, which was still asleep in the bed next to him.
A wash of emotion played over his face, so immediate and intense that Dora could not make heads or tails of it. “I’m not going mad,” Elias said hoarsely. “You’re here. I thought... with the plague...” He couldn’t seem to bring himself to finish the thought aloud. Exhausted tears threatened at his eyes.
Dora looked down. “I thought as much. I heard you talking, at least a little bit. I would have said something sooner, but it has been very difficult to find a mirror.”
Elias reached out for her again from instinct, but Dora was still less solid than he was. He glanced towards her sleeping body, then shoved violently to his feet, reaching into his jacket to pull the same glass wand he had used to make the stars in the ballroom. As he passed the wand over Dora, a fresh heat came over her, and she shivered. For just a moment, she thought she could feel the bedsheets against her skin, and the pillow against her cheek.
The sensations of the bed disappeared almost immediately, however. The heat drained away, like water through a sieve. Elias hissed out a soft curse to himself and ran his hands back through his tangled hair.
“The marquess has bound you to him instead of to your body,” he said. “I do not think that I can put you back until I sever that connection.”
Dora nodded patiently, though the revelation was greatly disappointing. She had hoped that finding Elias would solve everything at once, but that was clearly not the case.
Even as she finished the thought, a strange weakness began to overcome her. Dora sat down quickly on the side of the bed, next to her body.
“Oh dear,” she murmured. “So I am bound to Hollowvale now, just like my other half. It might not be safe for me to stay for too long, lest I fade away entirely.”
Elias stowed his glass wand again. His eyes flashed in alarm, and again his hand moved to steady her—but the gesture was still useless, however well-intentioned it might be. He let out a frustrated growl.
“Faerie,” Elias muttered incredulously. “You have been in faerie. And all the others too. No wonder I have not been able to cure you, since you aren’t even here to be cured!” He kicked at the chair next to him. “I’ll kill that damned creature, see if I don’t!”
Dora blinked. “But you never go to faerie,” she said. “I was going to ask if you could draw us back from here, or ask your advice on escaping. I didn’t mean to imply that you should—”
“Of course I am coming for you!” Elias told her hotly. His gold eyes burned at her. “I have tried everything, Dora. Everything. When I had no ideas left, I even prayed, for God’s sake. You have slept for a full day and a half since your cousin found you, and I have counted every awful second of it!”
Dora found herself momentarily speechless. There was something intimidating about Elias’ fury, but she could not quite bring herself to be afraid, given that so much of it was on her behalf.
“...everything?” Dora asked, before she could stop herself.
Elias froze.
“Did you try every potential cure from the treatise I translated?” Dora asked him. “One of the few applicable bits for sleeping curses was true love’s kiss, if I recall.”
A bright flush spread along Elias’ cheeks. “I did say everything,” he muttered. “Useless as it all was.”
Dora smiled. “I do not think that true love’s kiss can bring a soul back from faerie,” she said. “But even if it could, you would have to love me, Elias.”
Dora had expected him to snap at her over the ridiculousness of the idea. But there was an odd silence instead—and the longer it went on, the more her heart began to turn over in her chest.
“I will bring you back,” Elias said finally, in a far more subdued tone. He seemed suddenly unable to meet her eyes. “You and all the rest of the children. It’s clearly within the scope of my duties now either way, so there’s no use complaining at me.”
“Oh,” said Dora. She smiled dimly. “I am in love with you, just so you know. I had some trouble realizing it, because I did not think that I could fall in love at all. But I am quite certain of it now.”
Elias looked up at her with such a shocked expression that Dora immediately knew she had said something unconventional again. She pressed her lips together. “I see. People do not normally say that, I suppose. You must pretend that I was much more elegant and indirect about the matter.”
Elias swallowed. “You are perfect as you are, Dora,” he said softly. “And... and there are things which I should tell you—”
What he meant to tell her, however, Dora did not have the chance to find out. For she felt a cold hand on her shoulder, and the feeling of being pulled sharply back from a great distance.
“My wayward daughter,” Lord Hollowvale sighed at her, as she opened her eyes back in the laundry room at Charity House. “This half of you is even more belligerent than the first!” His pale blue eyes looked down at her with recrimination. “Clearly, we must put you back together soon.”
Chapter 17
Dora looked around for Theodora. She found her other half just past Lord Hollowvale, staring blankly into the distance. Her hair was tussled and her dress torn, and Dora knew that Theodora had tried to fight the faerie off.
“You have agitated yourself, dear,” Lord Hollowvale said lightly. “In the most literal way, I fear. You were so well-behaved, until you showed up!”
Dora stared at him calmly. Logic would not get here anywhere, she thought, unless she played along somewhat with the creature’s own delusions. “I am Lord Lockheed’s ward,” Dora told him. “And he put me into the care of my aunt. It is only virtuous that I do my best to return to her.”
Lord Hollowvale frowned at that. “I see your error,” he said. “But Lord Lockheed is not your caretaker, Theodora. Your mother made me your guardian, and I take that duty quite seriously.”
Dora smiled at him. “But you have no paperwork to that effect?” she asked. “How must I believe you, then?”
The marquess drew himself up in a cold fury, and Dora realised that she had misstepped. “You are fortunate to be my daughter,” he informed her in a chill tone. “For I would be otherwise obliged to avenge such a sleight to my honour. I am the Marquess of Hollowvale, and I would not tell a lie even if it were in my power to do so!”
The cold power that he held pressed down upon her like a smothering blanket, chilling her bones and crawling through her veins. Dora’s knees buckled; she managed only barely to keep herself upright.
“I am sorry,” she gasped out. “I should have known better, of course. You are generous not to punish me for my error.”
The marquess frowned at that. The overwhelming power that hovered in the air around him receded slowly. Eventually, Dora managed to catch her breath.
“It is true,” Lord Hollowvale said. “I am the most generous of any faerie lord that you shall ever meet.”
“You are, of course,” Dora said. And for the moment, it was true—for she had never met any other faerie lord in her life, and so Lord Hollowvale was by necessity the most generous of them.
The marquess continued to frown at her, and Dora found herself shrinking beneath his pale gaze. Eventually, he spoke again. “I d
o not like having two daughters,” he said. “One was the very perfect amount. I must find a way to put you back together with yourself, or else I shall be obliged to remove one of you.”
Dora swallowed slowly. “I would be pleased to be a single person again, my lord,” she said carefully.
Lord Hollowvale snapped his fingers, and Theodora came back to herself with a start. “Dora!” she gasped. “Lord Hollowvale is—”
“Yes, so I see,” Dora replied evenly. “He was just now observing that we would be better as a single person.” Dora knew that she needed to change the subject, lest Theodora become overwrought again and trigger one of the faerie’s mercurial moods.
“But how to put you back together?” Lord Hollowvale mused. He looked them both over, and Dora got the distinct impression that he was looking at something she could not see herself. “Ah! Yes, there is something tying you together still. A trickle of emotion. If I were to stimulate that, then perhaps you would come together naturally.” He beamed at his own genius. “I must simply make you very emotional while you are near to yourself, Theodora!”
Dora saw the terrible thoughts already whirling in his head. She knew suddenly that she needed to say something, before the mad faerie decided to torture her for her own good. “A party!” she said quickly. “The last time I felt a very strong emotion was at a party, dancing with a handsome man. And it is the season for balls in London right now, so you really must have one.”
Lord Hollowvale nodded sagely at this, as though he had been about to suggest the very same thing—though Dora was quite certain that his mind had been trending in a much darker direction. “A fantastic ball!” he said. “Yes, that is the only reasonable answer. I shall throw such a party as would make the ton unbearably jealous!”
He turned for the laundry room’s exit, clearly expecting that the two of them should follow. Dora did not feel optimistic that disobeying him again so soon would do her any good, and so she went after him, and gestured for Theodora to do the same.
Neither of them dared to look at Abigail as they headed out of the mess hall. But Dora reached out to squeeze the little girl’s shoulder as they passed.
All of us will find a way out of here, Dora thought with determination.
As Dora had hoped, the marquess wasted little time haring off to plan his perfect English ball. Unfortunately, he did not make the mistake of leaving Dora to her own devices for a second time. Instead, she found herself dragged away from Theodora and put into the care of a faerie tutor in etiquette—“to perfect your skill for the ball, of course!” Lord Hollowvale told her cheerfully.
To Dora’s great surprise, the tutor—an unnaturally tall elfin woman with eyes of purest coal—was introduced to her as the Baroness of Mourningwood. Dora recognised the title, though it took her a few minutes to remember from where; it eventually occurred to her that she had seen Lady Mourningwood listed in the peerage of faeries which she had perused at the magic shop. “Surely, a baroness must be too busy to teach me how to behave at a ball,” Dora protested to the faerie woman. “And I have been to many so far, so surely my manners must be at least tolerable.”
“Tolerable will not do for Lord Hollowvale’s daughter,” Lady Mourningwood informed her, in a voice like a deep, dark well. Her black eyes bore into Dora discomfortingly. “You are only human, of course, and so we must make do with you.”
Lady Mourningwood first instructed Dora on the importance of supper. She was to eat the dishes in precisely the correct order. Furthermore, said Lady Mourningwood, Dora must always keep one eye on Lord Hollowvale himself, and drink a sip of her wine whenever he raised his own glass to his lips, or else she might be forced to leave the ball in shame.
“And if you look at one of the servants,” said Lady Mourningwood, “you must be sure to scowl at them, just so.” Her features took on an expression of faint disgust, as though she had eaten something which disagreed with her.
Dora tried to mimic the baroness, but she was very bad at showing any emotion at all, and she knew that she probably looked faintly puzzled instead.
Dora was not certain just how long her lessons went on. Time seemed to be of no particular consequence in the Hollow House. It occurred to her belatedly that she could not possibly have been there for a full day and a half before scrying upon her sleeping body—and yet, Elias had said that much time had passed.
That is no good, Dora thought warily. For all I know, my funeral might be any moment. But there was no way for her to know what day it was in England, and no way for her to escape Lady Mourningwood’s doom-filled gaze, and so she resigned herself to trying to seem obedient for the moment.
Eventually, the baroness brought Dora into another room of the Hollow House and told her to stand very still and close her eyes. “Since you cannot seem to use the proper expression with servants,” Lady Mourningwood said, “you must not look at them at all.”
A soft skittering noise surrounded Dora, and she frowned to herself, unnerved. “Am I allowed to ask what they are, and what we are doing here?” she asked the baroness.
“They are brownies,” Lady Mourningwood informed her. “And they shall be dressing you for the ball.” She clucked her tongue at something which Dora could not see, and turned to address the faeries that surrounded them. “We will not be making her a gown from moonlight, you cretins!” the baroness said sternly. “That has not been popular since last week at least! Do you want Lord Hollowvale’s daughter to be laughed from his own ballroom? Today’s style is to be clad in forgotten memories!”
Dora really did want to open her eyes at that, but she stopped herself just in time. She did not want to learn what sort of punishments a faerie called Mourningwood might perpetrate upon her for ignoring instructions.
She was expecting the brownies to take her measure, as the woman at the dress shop in London had done. But instead, as they continued to skitter about, Dora felt a light whisper against her skin, as the gown was woven around her. Each touch of the strange material seemed to come with a distant, absent memory, so that Dora was quickly overwhelmed by the whole of it.
There was the scent of fresh-baked bread, wafting over a summer breeze; the taste of bland, boring gruel, served over and over again; the sigh of a gentleman asking a lady to dance. The rain drizzled outside yet again, and a priest droned on about which biblical figure begat which other biblical figure for what seemed like ages on end.
“I have been so silly, my little Theodora,” a woman whispered softly. “I thought I needed money in order to marry the man I loved. But now I have you, and I know the awfulness of what I have done.”
The memory passed in such a blur that Dora nearly missed it among the others. She tried to find it again, but it was lost among the rest of the gown. I am sure that was my mother, Dora thought. Had that been her own forgotten memory, from when she was very young?
“I do not believe in such a thing as love,” Elias scoffed. “Perhaps attraction, or companionship, or friendship. But so many men act as though love is some special sort of magic. I feel that I am qualified to say it isn’t so.”
“Well, but you have just described love, I think,” Albert replied in bemusement. “Attraction and companionship and friendship. Is there nothing special about those things, especially if they are all together at once?”
The sound of the faerie servants ceased, and Lady Mourningwood instructed Dora to open her eyes. She glanced down and saw a dress of tattered grey gossamer that shimmered in the misty light of the window. The gown was more unnerving than it was beautiful—but there was still something rare about it that made it seem more dignified than its ragged layers should have suggested.
As Dora looked over the dress, the baroness draped a long strand of oily, iridescent pearls around her neck. They felt unnaturally chill against Dora’s skin, and she shivered. “Er,” she said. “Are these normal pearls?”
“Heavens no,” Lady Mourningwood said evenly. “These are children’s tears. They are a bit common, I su
ppose, but we have them in special abundance here due to Charity House.”
Dora’s stomach twisted. She had to fight the instinct to tear the pearls from her neck. “I see,” she said instead, unable to formulate anything more polite in the moment. “Could I perhaps look at myself in a mirror? I would like to know that I am properly dressed.”
Lady Mourningwood shook her head in displeasure. “Mirrors are a dangerous thing in faerie,” she said. “They are not for looking at oneself.”
But that is exactly what mirrors are for, Dora thought. She kept the words to herself though, and changed her tack. “Then perhaps I might see Theodora—”
The door behind them opened, interrupting her, and Dora heard the distinctive uneven click-clack of Lord Hollowvale’s cane against the floor.
“Marvellous!” said the marquess. “You are ready, then. We must go to the ball, so that you may be happier than ever before.”
Dora glanced back towards him with faint alarm. “Already?” she asked. “But a proper ball takes weeks to prepare, back in London.”
Lord Hollowvale laughed. “Ah, back in London perhaps!” he said. “But in faerie, balls happen all of the time, whenever we please!” He offered out an arm towards Dora, as though to escort her. She did not dare to refuse—but something shivered inside her as she placed her hand on his sleeve. As she did, she noticed that Lord Hollowvale was now wearing at least one more jacket than he had been wearing before.
“How many jackets are you wearing?” Dora asked him, before she could stop herself.
“Five in total!” the marquess beamed, clearly pleased that she had noticed. “One in each of the latest styles, you know. I have it on very good authority that wealth improves a man’s virtue, especially if it is visible—and they were all quite obviously expensive.”
“Oh,” Dora managed. “Then you must be very virtuous indeed.”
“Everyone agrees as much,” Lord Hollowvale said cheerfully.
Half a Soul Page 20