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By all accounts, it was an impossible wish. If Lord Foxglove’s bedtime story was correct, then only a mortal magician could play the Daghda’s harp. But then… Clarimonde had promised Tertia an impossible task, had she not?

For months now, Tertia had surely promised her brother that she would find a player for the harp. If he were to discover her deception… well. Clarimonde did not know him well enough to guess at what it was that he might do. But Tertia clearly had some idea of the trouble it would cause her.

“I see,” Mr Brand said.

Clarimonde was certain that he suspected something of the lie that had been spun before him. But he was clever enough, at least, not to press the matter in front of Lady Hollowvale.

“You should know,” Clarimonde told the man quietly, “that Miss Molinari is also here under Lady Hollowvale’s hospitality.”

Mr Brand shot her a slow, ironic smile. “I had assumed as much, Miss Betony,” he said.

The Lord Sorcier’s hound would not be able to directly foil the task that Clarimonde had set for herself. But both of them knew well enough that he would search for some less obvious means by which to disrupt it.

“Breakfast, then,” Lady Hollowvale said clearly. She turned to address the table at large, with her hand still clasped against her chest. “In loving memory of poor Mr Bligh.”

Mr Brand pulled out the chair just next to Miss Molinari and settled himself beside her. He reached for one of the ever-present pitchers of wine that had been set there, now half-frozen, and poured himself a sluggish glass—then raised it in Clarimonde’s direction.

“Alas,” he said. “To poor Mr Bligh. May he rest in peace.”

The hound within his shadow settled at his feet beneath the table, with a dark chuff of laughter.

CHAPTER 13

“Faeries cannot break a bargain. Faeries will always try to break a bargain.”

LORD ELIAS WILDER TO MISS CLARIMONDE BETONY, AGE 14

Breakfast was an uneasy affair, with Mr Brand sitting so conspicuously on Miss Molinari’s other side. Mr Brand, himself, seemed entirely indifferent to the tense atmosphere; he spoke casually of the latest news in London—it was still wet, apparently, and dreary—while slipping scraps to his hound beneath the table.

Clarimonde had finally managed to stop staring at him—but only by attacking her food with obvious violence. She speared another cold sausage with dour menace, as the white dormouse shuffled anxiously upon her shoulder.

“What precisely did you mean when you said that you might make him beg for death?” the faerie mumbled.

Clarimonde narrowed her eyes at the sausage. “I spoke without thinking,” she said flatly. “Surely, you don’t believe that I was being honest?”

There was, from her shoulder, a tiny squeak of worry. “You are almost always honest,” Lord Foxglove pointed out warily. “I know that very well.”

Clarimonde pressed her lips together. “It does not matter,” she said. “I should not have said it. I will not speak so foolishly again.”

This much, at least, was true. She had no intention of warning Mr Brand any further about her capabilities. If she was forced to use her oil of datura as a weapon, then she would simply… do so.

The dormouse went quiet.

“I have never seen you quite so furious before,” it admitted.

Clarimonde craned her head to look at the faerie. The mouse on her shoulder had a slight tremor in its body. A thoroughly unpleasant suspicion overcame her, as she realised that Lord Foxglove was… frightened.

Of her?

The idea seemed laughable. It also bothered her in ways that she could not properly articulate.

“I have never been this angry before in my life,” Clarimonde told him quietly. “I do not know if I could ever feel this way again—and certainly not because of you.”

The mouse cleared its throat. “I did… perhaps… come close to throwing you from a moving carriage once,” it mumbled sheepishly.

Clarimonde knitted her brow at her fork. The observation did confound her for a moment. Why hadn’t she been angry with the faerie after that? Perhaps, she thought, she simply hadn’t had the time.

But that explanation felt wrong. It was an explanation that felt like an explanation, rather than the truth.