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The fairy refused to speak. This was, in no small part, because when the thing expelled itself from Thomas, Sofia was ready and waiting. She had her brother's ears plugged with fabric and the mouth of a jar placed over her brother's parted lips so that the fairy sped right into the glass base, stunning itself just long enough for Sofia to close the lid.
The fairy—pixie?—blinked out of existence for a moment and then reappeared right in the exact same spot.
That was good. It meant the binding she'd placed on the jar had worked.
Sofia smiled at the creature. She tapped a fingernail against the glass and then turned to look down at her brother.
"How do you fare?"
Thomas blinked. He swallowed. He said: "All right."
He looked all right. A bit pale, not as vibrant as he was with Nell Jackons's little fairy lighting him up from within, but nowhere near as close to death as he'd been with Poynton latched onto his soul.
"Good," Sofia said. She turned to the jar in her hand, held it up at eye level. "And you?"
The fairy—a little man-shaped thing with tousled hair and iridescent wings—crossed his arms over his chest and looked away.
That was all right too. The worst had already happened. They couldn't possibly sink any lower than this, which meant that now, more than ever, Sofia had all the time in the world.
**
They grabbed what they could and fled Broadwater on horseback while Nell Jackson watched from the gravel concourse outside the stable.
Jackson looked absolutely heartbroken watching Thomas ride off with that pixie inside him. They'd defeated Poynton and Nell Jackson had saved the Queen, but she'd lost her husband, her father, her home, and now she'd lost the only thing that ever made her special too. She'd lost everything that made her think she could dictate the terms of her own life.
Sofia had lost her husband, her father and her home, yes. She and her brother had betrayed the crown. They were renegades. But Sofia still had power. It hadn't been enough to save Thomas or defeat Poynton on her own, but it was hers more truly than that spirit had ever been Nell's. It was a power that Sofia could not and would not give away. A power that burned within her. A power that would only grow.
"We'll go to London," Thomas said, beside her.
"That's the first place they'll look."
"Where then?" The way his voice caught on the wind, Sofia couldn't tell if there was a sharp edge to the question.
Sofia answered him honestly. "I haven't figured that out yet."
They rode across fields, through woods, and then Sofia felt it: a pull, a beckoning, like a childhood friend gently taking her hand and leading her through the garden. Thomas pointed and said, "That way."
So he felt it too. Or the spirit inside him did.
They were not drawn to a garden, but a deserted village in the middle of the forest, overgrown and abandoned. Sofia recoiled as she led her horse toward a rusted gate and found a skeleton hanging there.
No, not abandoned. Deceased.
"Plague," Thomas said, with distaste.
"So it would seem," Sofia agreed, but she was not so sure. There was something else, a sizzle to the air. A prickle against the skin. A breeze rustled the trees and sent bits of rubbish swinging—scraps of shredded fabric, talismans of twisted wood.
Most of the village had long since decayed, buildings caved in, fallen into piles of rotting wood. There was a well with a bucket beside it, a skeleton crumpled against the bricks. Another skeleton sat with a hatchet in hand. Died mid-chop and untouched since.
Sofia gestured toward the woodsman's corpse. "Plague?" she asked.
Thomas shrugged.
A little further into the village they encountered a small cottage, still standing against all odds, though it was obvious that nature was doing its best to lay claim. Branches and vines had grown in through the windows, snaked across the ceiling and out through a hole in the roof.
"Do you think someone lives here?" Sofia asked, running the tips of her fingers over a table, over a shelf of dusty books.
"No," Thomas said, dismissive. "How could they?"
Thomas saw so much more of the world than Sofia ever could, and yet he still lacked so much imagination. He saw this cottage and couldn't imagine anyone living in a place in such a state, but Sofia saw that there were parts of this cottage where the dust had been wiped away. It could not have been so long ago, for it had not yet re-accumulated. The table had been wiped clean, and the chairs as well. There were fingerprints in the dust of the bookshelves and on the spines of the books. The hearth had been swept too, and a pot set beside was wiped clean. As clean as anything could be in such a place.
Sofia set her pistol beside the bed. Surely, with Nell Jackson's sprite inside him, Thomas could handle whoever might return to this place, but for any threats that Thomas could not subdue, Sofia would be ready.
**
It should have been Poynton haunting her dreams, looming large in her nightmares, but no. It was Nell Jackson that consumed her thoughts. After everything Sofia had done, all of that work, Nell Jackson had just—
No, she hadn't won. Not yet. Nell Jackson had lost too. The proof of that was here with Sofia, trapped in a glass jar on Sofia's table.
There was still a chance to save everything, to pin it all on Nell, to return to Broadwater triumphant. It was Sofia or Nell and Sofia would do everything in her power to make sure it was Sofia standing tall at the very end.
She knew this to be true, but it didn't stop her thoughts. She couldn't stop thinking of Nell, dreaming of her, standing up against the entirety of Broadwater, catching a bullet in the palm of her hand. It had been terrifying to find oneself faced with so much preternatural power in the form of one common woman—a woman that Sofia remembered as a child, hanging around outside the Talbot. She remembered when Nelly Jackson bristled at the future offered to her and ran off with the very first soldier that happened to glance in her direction.
She remembered when the news spread that Nelly Jackson had died.
She should have stayed dead.
So much had changed since that morning at Broadwater, her father's blood seeping into the floorboards and Nell Jackson standing over Sofia pleading for Sofia to tell the truth.
And if Sofia had? Where would she be then?
Would it have been worse than this rundown cottage, this abandoned village of death?
Certainly not, but there had been no good choices. She couldn't have imagined the sort of power that Nell Jackson held then, nor the power, the potential, that Sofia would unlock within herself.
Everything changed. She'd lost her father and Poynton and Broadwater, but she could feel her strength returning every day. She had Poynton's journal and she remembered all that she'd been taught.
And there was more to be had.
The fairy was experimenting. He'd tried many times to simply blink out of existence to no avail, reappearing back inside the confines of Sofia's jar. Next he'd tried to make himself as small as possible, small enough to slip through whatever gap might exist between the mouth of the jar and its lid. Sofia, of course, had bound the thing, and there were no gaps to be found. When that didn't work, the fairy tried the opposing tactic. He began to expand. Sofia understood the thinking. If he could expand enough, eventually the glass would have no choice but to crack and break, releasing him back into the world—at which time, he would no doubt return to Nell Jackson.
This would not work either.
Sofia watched the way the fairy's face pressed up against the glass, his body contorted to fit into the confined space, to fill all of the gaps.
She leaned forward. "Work with me," she said. "Give up on Nelly Jackson. Bind yourself to me and I'll release you from this prison."
The fairy's distorted face glared back at her. He stuck out his tongue at her. It flattened out against the glass, a grotesque pink blob.
Sofia turned away in disgust.
**
No one returned to the cottage to surprise Sofia and Thomas that night or any other. By the third day, they'd run out of the food that Sofia had taken from the Broadwater pantry. If Thomas had been entirely Thomas, he would have been useless after three days in a cabin unfit for habitation. He would have spent his time sulking in front of the fire, refusing to do anything of use. Nothing about their current situation was normal, however. Thomas was fueled by a fairy, so instead of sulking at their predicament, he was outside, chopping wood using an ax he'd found propped against the outside wall of the cottage and the hatchet that he'd pried from a skeletal hand.
He wielded the ax with apparent ease, though she was certain he'd never once chopped wood in his life before this. For her part, she'd regained most of her energy following the fight with Poynton. She'd thrown all of her it into figuring out how to hold the fairy if and when it departed her brother.
She'd taken Poynton's journal when they fled Broadwater and she leafed through his notes, a glass bottle held tight in her other hand. Most of his writing was in code, and he'd started to teach her the key, but she was still missing something. She couldn't quite make the words fall into place.
Thomas returned with an armful of wood that he set beside the hearth. He collapsed into the chair opposite Sofia, his fingers drumming against the table.
"We'll go to James Bramley's home in Halifax. He'll take us in." Thomas paused, belched, looked away.
He'd been exceedingly gassy since the prior afternoon. It was unlike him and Sofia knew it was Nell Jackson's fairy at the root of his condition. She stared at the glass jar in her hand, at the cork stopper. On its own, it wouldn’t be enough, but if she could—
Beside her Thomas groaned, full of gas and hungry despite it.
"You plan to tell Lord Bramley about your condition?" she asked.
"No," Thomas said with a roll of his eyes.
"Then we'd best stay here until I know what this means for us," Sofia concluded. From what little Sofia had learned, she understood that the fairy never stayed in Nell Jackson for long. The duration of a fight, no longer than that. Certainly not three days. How long could it remain inside her brother, and what would happen if it let Thomas go?
"I'll find a town then. I'll purchase food."
"You don't know the way."
He nodded his concession, but then he stood and moved to the open door of the cottage, staring out at the trees. Eventually he pointed. "There's a village that way."
Sofia closed Poynton's journal. She moved to stand beside Thomas.
"How can you be sure?" she asked, but when she focused, she felt the passing of the breeze. The rubbish rattled on its strings, treetops swayed above their heads. For a second she thought she smelled charred meat, horse dung, sweat, but the next moment it was gone. Nothing but forest as far as the eye could see, but she knew that he was right. Knew she'd choose the same direction, knew she'd find a village there, an inn and a shop and people who might not recognize Sofia, but would surely pull back at the sight of Thomas Blancheford riding into town.
“They’ll know your face. They’ll recognize you by your clothes, as disheveled as they are.” Sofia pulled Thomas back into the cottage, to a wardrobe that contained a few dusty moth-eaten garments. Thomas wasn’t so changed that his face didn’t twist when she held up a pair of loose brown trousers, nor the shirt that was surely once white, several holes visible on one side. And then the most important addition: a hat to hide his shorn head.
Once he was dressed, he stood before her. The change of clothes worked. He was barely recognizable as the man he’d been before. He pressed a hand against his gut and suppressed another belch.
Sofia pulled him close, made sure he listened to what she said. “Keep the fairy inside at all costs. If you feel you might lose it, turn around and return to me. If you find food before you reach the village, acquire it by whatever means necessary and return to me. It’s fighting to escape you. I need you here when it does.”
She was taking a chance, letting Thomas and that fairy leave her side, but she wasn’t ready and they needed to eat. Thomas would find food and Sofia—Sofia would prepare herself.
**
The fairy was on his knees, head bent, eyes closed. He was up to something new, but so far whatever that something was it wasn't working to get him out of Sofia's trap. He hadn't accomplished much except to provide Sofia with a wonderful lantern, the golden glow of his energy lighting up the ramshackle cottage in the night.
A beacon, perhaps? Was that it?
There was magic in the forest, Sofia could feel it. It was in the woods, the village, the cottage. Was the fairy calling for some form of help? Perhaps, but the magic had been there since they arrived. There was a presence here and it had not yet offered the fairy any aid. That was interesting. It was promising. It was something to think about once all of this was done. Until then—
"Work with me," Sofia pleaded. "That's all I ask."
The fairy stared back at her, those deep brown eyes hard and unyielding.
What was it about Nell Jackson that inspired such loyalty? Why, out of all of the people in the world, would a magical being such as this choose someone like Nell?
Sofia turned her back on the thing. It didn't matter if he didn't agree to her plea. She'd find a way to harness that power. She'd take matters into her own hands. She'd already made great strides here. She’d placed a successful binding on the jar. It had held the fairy for days. She would figure out how to place a similar binding on herself. She'd already started. She was well on her way.
Resolved, she turned back toward the glowing jar, leaned down until she was eye level with the little fairy. It stared back at her, unmoved.
Sofia smiled. "I'll never let you out of there. You’ll stay exactly where you are until you agree to help me, or until I determine how to control you."
**
Thomas had been gone for two hours and Sofia knew she was running out of time. She'd abandoned Poynton's journal, frustrated by the code she'd been unable to fully crack and certain that most of his recent machinations were centered on the queen anyway. He could not help her now. Sofia was on her own. She would sink or she would swim.
Sofia closed Poynton's journal and pushed it aside. The afternoon sun streamed in through the hole in the cottage's roof, the light highlighting the dust of the place that swirled through the air. Sofia stared down at the bright patch on the floor, the dappled shade of the overlying trees where it danced on the floorboards. She stood from the table and stood in that light, feeling the sun warm on her skin. She closed her eyes and looked up toward it, took a deep breath and then another.
"I dabble in things. Things that most people are frightened of."
And Sofia had said: I'm not frightened of anything. But wasn't true, not even then. She was frightened of so many things, and most of them had since come to pass. She'd nearly lost her brother. She lost her home, her station. She'd nearly killed the queen, was guilty of treason. That fear hadn't even been on the original list. It had all happened and yet… Sofia was still here.
Yes, true, she was standing in a dilapidated cottage basking in the sun streaming in through a hole in the roof, but it didn't matter. She knew now that she would figure it out. She could do this. She would find a way.
There was a thud off to her left.
Sofia's eyes snapped open. "Thomas?"
No response. Sofia squinted in the light. She looked about the cottage, took in her surroundings.
Everything was exactly as it had been before.
No, that wasn't true—Sofia had left the glass bottle and Poynton's journal on the table when she'd stood up, but only the bottle remained there now. Sofia scanned the floor nearest her, but did not see the journal on the floor. It was bound in a dark leather, perhaps it had fallen to the other side of the table and was obscured by the shadows of the cottage?
Sofia stepped around the table to look. She found the journal in the shadows of the floor, up against the raised portion of the cottage that served as a bedroom. Sofia picked up the journal and brushed the dust from its cover. She turned and set it back on the table.
She was standing in front of a small shelf lined with books and she moved closer, ran her fingertips over the spines. She'd hardly paid attention to them before, but now that she stood here, she realized how rare it was to see so many books in a cottage of this size. It was rare to see any books at all, and yet here there were a dozen left to rot on the shelf. At first glance, they appeared to be works of fiction, frivolous things designed to pass the time. Luxuries. But as Sofia's touch moved over their spines, her fingertips tingled with magic and the titles of the books faded away, revealing a much different set of books in their place. These were leatherbound journals with no titles printed on them at all.
Sofia's heart beat fast in her throat.
She began pulling the books one by one, opening them up to find what was inside. A book of healing, a book of casting, a book of potions, and there, tucked between them, the answers she'd been searching for: The Book of Binding.
**
"Beautiful," Thomas said when he returned to find the bottle illuminating everything. He looked at the fairy within almost wistfully, as though he missed the short time he shared with the creature.
Was it really so wonderful?
Sofia would soon find out for herself.
Her brother did not revert to his old self the moment the fairy left his body, not entirely. He wasn’t as vibrant, as strong or as helpful as he’d been when he’d had the thing inside him, but he wasn’t as haunted as he’d been before either. He wore his costume and he took trips into the nearby village, returning with meat and vegetables that he expected Sofia to know how to prepare, as though Sofia did not have more important things to do than to learn to cook. She had an entire shelf of books to devour, books that could teach her as much as Poynton ever had and here she was… cooking.
She’d set a pot of water to boil and now she dumped the meat and entire vegetables unceremoniously into the pot. The vegetables would soften as they boiled and then it would be easy to divide them up, cut them with a dull knife or a tarnished old fork so she could portion the food between them.
The meal turned out bland, tasteless, but Thomas merely grimaced at the first bite. He did not push the food away. Sofia hardly paid attention to the meal, her fork in one hand, her fingers holding her place in the open book to her right. Below the shelf where she'd found the book on binding that had allowed her to trap Nell Jackson's fairy, she'd discovered a book called The Book of Spirits. She hoped that within these pages she'd learn how to take Nell's fairy as her own.
She'd reached a page toward the center of the book that appeared garbled, as though the letters had been scrambled. At first she thought it was written in code, like Poynton's journal, but there was something else that was off about the pages.
She pushed her plate away and turned the book toward Thomas.
"What do you see here?"
Thomas looked at the pages, his eyes scanning over the lines. "It's Hamlet," he said. "Someone's taken the time to copy it over by hand." His face twisted. "That's what has you so interested? A sloppy copy of Hamlet?"
"It isn't a sloppy copy of Hamlet," Sofia said, "It's a journal documenting the author's understanding of the Arts."
"The Arts," Thomas repeated.
Sofia just looked across the table at him. Her eyes slid past him to the bottle that held Nell Jackson's fairy. The fairy had stopped his glowing and now appeared to be talking to himself.
Thomas opened his mouth, perhaps to warn her off the dangers of continuing to pursue the Arts, but he changed his mind, shook his head and went back to his meal.
Sofia watched him for a long moment and then returned to the book. She passed over the scrambled page and onto the next, which was once again perfectly legible—a page about little creatures called the Gnats of Gunby. She turned back to the prior page, but this page still appeared to be scrambled, as though a secondary spell had been cast over the contents of the page, a spell over the spell that made the book appear as a shoddy copy of Hamlet to the untrained eye.
On the mantle, Nell Jackson's fairy was silently shouting.
**
Thomas had gone back into the village again. Now that he knew his beard and his wardrobe were enough to disguise him, he was leaving her here on her own more and more, disappearing for most of the day and returning to the cottage late in the evening. Sofia knew that he was spending the rest of what little money they had left, wasting his afternoons away hunched over the bar of a tavern somewhere, but she was so deep in her own journey that she couldn't bring herself to care.
She was a woman possessed, obsessed, single-minded. Alone, with the books and Nell's fairy, Sofia paced the floor of the cottage, back and forth, back and forth. The Book of Binding had given her the information she needed to imprison the fairy in the bottle and to hold him there for weeks, but it had not shown her how to bind the fairy to herself, how to use the fairy. The Book of Spirits had an entire chapter dedicated to fairies with enough detail that Sofia was now certain that Nell Jackson's fairy was an entity that went by the name of Billy Blind. The fairy flinched when Sofia said the name aloud, confirming that Sofia was correct.
That was where things became difficult. Fairies, such as Billy Blind, chose their vessels. The book contained a wealth of information on how to become a more attractive vessel for a fairy, but there was little on how to force an unwilling fairy into a ready vessel. Looking at the resolute face of Billy Blind, Sofia knew there was no way to make herself a more attractive host. They were far beyond the possibility of that.
There was nothing to be done but to take all that she'd learned, all that these books had to offer, to synthesize the information, figure out the pieces and where they fit, discover how to accomplish this task on her own.
The thing of it was—she only had one chance. She would have to break the binding on the bottle in order to accept the fairy into herself, but if the fairy successfully rejected her, he was free. That was it. Sofia had lost.
Poynton had once taught her a spell that she'd use to entrap Nell Jackson in her surroundings. What if the spell could be used to entrap the fairy within Sofia as well? The spell had been draining. It had taken so much from Sofia, but if the fairy was trapped within her, if it was powering her, then perhaps she could hold it for some time. Perhaps they could go on like that, Sofia taking the power to bind, the fairy giving Sofia the very power that kept it trapped, forever.
She returned to Poynton's journal, to the earlier pages she'd already learned, the pentagram and the symbols that she would need to begin her work. These pages were still legible; she'd already been provided the key to these spells.
First she'd have to find a suitable place. What was it that Poynton had said?
A quiet place, as subterranean as possible.
Sofia surveyed her surroundings. This wasn't Broadwater with its deep dark cellars. It was a cottage in an abandoned village reclaimed by the forest, but there must be some space, mustn't there? Everyone had a root cellar of some sort.
Sofia went outside. She circled the cottage, looking for a hatch or a doorway, an entrance to a cool, dark space beneath the cottage. She walked the entire perimeter, but saw no obvious entrances. She kicked at the leaves, pushed aside bushes, and found nothing hidden beneath or behind. Were the entrances to root cellars located outside? She was certain she'd seen doors to root cellars outside some of the homes in Tottenham. It certainly didn't seem that there was enough room inside the cottage itself.
Sofia went back inside and began to pace. As she walked, she noticed that there was a portion of the floor that sounded different than the rest, as though the floorboards beneath were loose and rattling. She crouched down and lifted the corner of the woven rug, faded and frayed. Beneath the rug she found a trap door. She pushed the rug aside until she found the door's latch, pulled it up, and was immediately hit with a puff of cool musty air.
She smiled as she descended down the steps. It was a small space, hardly large enough for the circle, the pentagram, the elaborate symbology required for her work.
She would have to make it work.
**
It was late by the time Sofia finished setting everything up. The sun had set, the forest was dark and Thomas had yet to return from the village. Perhaps that was for the best. She did not need him mucking everything up.
She set the bottle down in the circle.
The candles were lit, the fairy was set in the circle before her. Sofia held Poynton's book open in her hand. She began:
"Cape hunc captivum…"
Nell Jackson's fairy banged on the walls of glass, mouth open in a silent scream. Sofia's heart jumped in her chest at the thing's fear, certain it meant she was on the right track.
"...immortalem et mehi soli liga."
He burned brighter than any of the candles, thrashed and hit, punched and kicked.
"Veni, caeca ira, et fines inconstantes…"
The fairy ran back and forth, the bottle rocking as he threw his weight from one side of the glass to the other. This distracted Sofia, but only for a moment. She was surprised he had not thought to try that before.
"...huius vitae tenuis in aeternam potestem confunde."
The fairy's beacon blinked out. The candles flickered. Sofia stumbled, her heart racing, gasping for air. She was so very close.
"Petredo super potredinem."
Rot upon rot.
"Robur super robur."
Strength upon strength.
"Vita super vitam."
Life upon life.
"Mea et mea et mea."
Mine and mine and mine.
The cellar was quiet, the fairy had stopped fighting. The wind had stopped pulling at Sofia's hair and it settled around her shoulders. She took a deep breath, one and then another. She could feel it already.
She had won.
She crouched down and took up the bottle in her hand. She peered at the creature inside. He shook his head. It was no use.
"Mea et mea et mea."
She pulled the stopper from the bottle, held her thumb over the mouth.
"Mea et mea et mea."
She tipped the bottle to her lips. The fairy slipped out of the bottle and into Sofia's mouth. She thought for a moment that it might fight, that she might choke, but she swallowed and the fairy slid right down.
She felt it—a lump in her throat, a burning in her chest—and then she didn’t feel it at all for a moment, just long enough for the panic to start setting in, that old familiar fear, the loss of control. And right as she was ready to fall to her knees in despair, it happened. Her whole body lit up with it. Her heart beat a new unfamiliar rhythm in her ears, like drums in a parade. The forest buzzed all above and around her, an entire orchestra of sound, like nothing she'd ever heard before.
Sofia crushed the glass bottle in her hand, watched it turn to dust that sparkled as it rained down onto the floor.
She looked down at her hand. Not a single cut.
She laughed.
**
Sofia wanted to fight and dance, scream and sing. The sun was coming up, but Thomas had not returned, so Sofia burst out of the cottage on her own, plucked a skeleton from the ground, danced it around in a circle and then tossed it aside. She took Thomas's hatchet, threw it at a tree and watched, fascinated, as the hatchet hit its mark, as the tree split beneath the blade. Everything around her seemed both dark and alive, curling vines and cackling birds, and all of it tinted in a strange gold shimmer, just out of sight, right at the edges of Sofia's vision.
Inside her the fairy fought, but it didn't matter. A little indigestion, nothing more.
Mea et mea et mea.
Nell Jackson's fairy was hers now, all Sofia's and soon Nell Jackson would be Sofia's too, Sofia's to do with as Sofia pleased. Sofia could not wait to end Nell Jackson once and for all. She could do it right now, run all the way back to Tottenham, break Nell Jackson down beneath her hands.
No, no, that wouldn't do. It had to be set up just right, just right to frame Nell and absolve Thomas and Sofia.
Nell and Nell and Nell.
She'd spent her days since leaving Broadwater preoccupied by Thomas, by the puzzle of Nell's fairy, but now, it all rushed back. She must have Nell Jackson. She must have Nell restrained, subdued—yes, yes, dead.
She stretched beneath the morning sun, her head singing with this newfound power, her guts a growling battlefield, a war being waged that she felt certain she would win. She'd done everything right. She'd used all of her talent. The fairy fueled its own prison; it fueled Sofia's future.
And Sofia—she'd never felt more alive, more courageous, more ravenous than she felt that morning.
She picked up her skirt and returned to the cottage, ransacking the small amount of food they had left: a carrot that she ate raw, relishing the way it snapped beneath her teeth, a scrap of stale bread, a handful of wilting cabbage. It wasn't enough. She longed for meat. She slurped water from the pot cooling on the hearth.
She remembered her books and she rushed to the cellar to retrieve them, brought them up into the light and spread them out on the table.
A horse approached, footsteps outside the cottage door.
Thomas returned.
"Thought I might find you here," the voice said, and Sofia looked up.
She couldn't help herself. She smiled.
Nell Jackson. At last.
**
The fairy buzzed, excited, beneath Sofia's skin. She stood at the table, hands gripped to the rail of an old chair. She wanted to keep smiling, to grin, to laugh. She wrestled her face into submission. Nell Jackson paced the room at the other side of the table, her body draped in that ridiculous coat.
"How did you find me?" Sofia asked. She wanted to know. She wanted to know that thoughts of Sofia kept Nell Jackson awake at night. She needed to know that she haunted Nell's days and her nights. She wanted to know that she'd won.
"Wasn't hard," Nell said. She took her time, taking in the cottage. The hole in the roof, the books spread out across the table. Taking in Sofia, those downturned eyes on Sofia's unkept hair, on the dusty black of Sofia's skirt, the dirt-smudged white of her blouse.
Sofia waited, elated.
"Your brother stumbled into our tavern, same as he used to, except this time he wasn't looking for a fight. Came to thank me for saving his life, if you believe it."
Sofia did believe it. It was too soon to hope that their ordeal had changed her brother for good, but it had scared him enough for short-term change. He was less interested in living in this forest than she was. This place had power that Sofia was only just starting to understand. It had only just opened up before her and now, with this added power inside her, she'd get to the meat of it, crack open the nut and take it all for herself.
Nell Jackson continued: "Billy obviously wasn't in your brother anymore, figured that meant he must be with you. Wasn't hard to figure out where Thomas meant when he complained about the skeletons out where you were staying. Gave him a drink on the house and everything." Nell looked around. "I stayed here myself once. For a while."
Of course she had. Where else was someone to go when they were pushed out of their home, their life?
"It's nice, really, once you get over all the bodies outside."
Sofia was going to throttle Thomas, but first—
She placed both hands at the edge of the table and pushed. With her newfound strength, her power, the table surged forward. It hit Nell Jackson in the hips and knocked her back. Nell stumbled and fell, sprawled out across the floor. A knife clattered out of her hand and skidded across the floor.
Sofia was on her at once, crouched over Nell's struggling form, knees on either side of Nell's waist, hands pressing Nell's wrists to the boards of the floor. Nell bucked up beneath her, struggling, her feet trying to find purchase against the floor, to knock Sofia off and get the upper hand.
That wasn't going to happen now. Nell was no match for Sofia anymore, not while Sofia had the strength and the magic.
Nell Jackson was nobody. She was Sofia's for the taking.
Sofia looked down into Nell Jackson's face. Nell was still struggling against her, but when she caught Sofia looking down at her, studying her, she stopped. She looked back.
And then Nell Jackson smiled.
Sofia slapped her. She slapped Nell Jackson with the open palm of her hand, with all the force of Nell's fairy behind it.
No, that couldn't be right. Nell had cried out, she'd turned her face away, and her cheek had turned a burning red, but that hardly seemed all the pain Sofia was capable of eliciting. Her stomach gurgled, and Sofia knew. The little beast was fighting her.
She raised her hand again.
Beneath her, Nell shouted. She struggled. Sofia could feel the resistance against her arm, the fight being fought in her heart and her muscles. She growled, and instead of slapping Nell, she grabbed Nell's face in her hand, squishing Nell's jaw between fingers and thumb.
“I’ll give you something to laugh at,” she said, though Nell wasn't actually laughing at all anymore. It didn't matter. She felt certain she could win this little internal skirmish. She could win; she could crush Nell beneath her hand. Break Nell. It would be so easy—all she had to do was squeeze.
Nell stared up at her, her eyes wide, such a warm shade of brown. Her skin felt hot beneath Sofia's fingers, her mouth pushed open by the press of Sofia's hand.
Sofia was aware suddenly of the solidity of Nell's form beneath her, Nell's arm pressed down to the floor by Sofia's hand, her other arm—her other arm—
Sofia had lost track of Nell's other arm and realized that Nell was reaching for her fallen knife. Her arm outstretched and grasping. It was no use. The knife was out of reach.
It was Sofia's turn to smile, and she did. Looking down at Nell Jackson, pinned beneath her, a smile stretched wide across Sofia's face. She reveled in the victory of it, slid her thumb along Nell's jaw, pressed her fingers to the pulse at Nell's wrist.
This was how it felt to take back her power. This was how it felt to take back the life that had been stolen from her. Nell struggled beneath her, her body pushing up against Sofia's thighs, against the very center of her. Sofia let out a breath, surprised by the rush of satisfaction, of sneaking pleasure. She settled into it, her hips shifting over the warmth of Nell, the friction of her.
She watched the way Nell's face changed, the way her brow furrowed. The way her eyes widened, as if in realization. The way they darkened a moment later.
Sofia imagined how she must look, her eyes heavy, face set, determined, and her body—her body moving as she… as she pleasured herself on Nell Jackson.
She moaned and she hated it, tried to take it back, to swallow it. It made it sound helpless. It made her sound caught. She shifted her hand, her fingers moving to cover Nell's mouth, to press her mouth shut as she would press her own mouth shut. Beneath her, Nell shook her head. Her arm was moving again, but it didn't matter. The knife was all the way across the room. It was so far out of reach and Nell was no match for Sofia. Not now. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Nell's hand came up and clamped down on the back of Sofia's neck. She pulled Sofia forward, and the move felt familiar, like it was exactly what should happen next, and so Sofia went. She let Nell Jackson pull her in, and when she moved her hand from Nell Jackson's mouth, Nell pushed forward and pressed herself to Sofia, her mouth to Sofia's mouth, her hand behind Sofia's head, holding Sofia close.
This time when Sofia moaned, Nell swallowed it. This time, Nell made small desperate sounds back, pressed them onto Sofia's tongue, made Sofia shiver with them. It had been so long since Sofia had kissed someone, even longer since she'd wanted it, and oh, Sofia wanted this. She pressed her tongue into Nell's mouth, pressed her hips to Nell's body. Her stomach flipped and it thrilled her.
"You're mine," Sofia said, triumphant, forming the words against Nell's begging lips. She pressed another kiss to Nell's waiting mouth, then pulled back, looked down her nose at Nell. "Say it."
"Yeah," Nell agreed, "yeah, yours." And she pulled Sofia in again.
Nell didn't sound convinced, not yet, but Sofia could be patient. She could give Nell a little more time. She could—
"Oh," Sofia said, the pleasure of realization rolling through her. She ground down onto Nell's prone form, kissed Nell with renewed fervor. Nell met her in kind. She strained beneath Sofia, pushing herself up to meet Sofia's driving hips, her mouth sucking at Sofia's lips.
mea et mea et mea.
Nell and Nell and Nell.
She pulled away from the kiss, pushed herself up so that she had better control over her hips, so that she could looked down at Nell before her, Nell beneath her.
Nell looked a mess. She looked debauched. A mass of curls spread out around her head, the red of her cheek, the swell of her lips. Nell brought a hand to Sofia's waist, pulled her forward, urged her to continue.
"Mea…" Sofia began.
Nell licked her lips. "What?"
Sofia ignored her question.
"…et mea et mea."
She felt the forest shift around them. Felt the cottage creak and the bones outside rattle. She took from Nell, pinned Nell, claimed Nell.
"Mea et mea et mea."
Beneath her Nell grunted. She held onto Sofia. She let Sofia take.
"Mea et mea et mea"
Wind pushed through the hole in the cottage's roof, pushed a window shutter, sent it clattering. She could smell the magic in the air, moss and dirt, salt and sweat. She rocked against Nell, and she was close. She was so close now.
She threw her head back and when she cried out it was "Mea et mea et mea..
Mine and mine and mine.
Nell and Nell and Nell.
"Mine! Mine! Mine!"
It exploded within her, a great quake of bright white pleasure. She rode through it, let it move her, let it shiver through her limbs, up her throat and onto her tongue.
When Nell reached for her again, she went with a growl, hands on Nell's face, mouth on Nell's mouth, Nell's lips between her teeth. She shuddered into the kiss and felt something burble up within her, a feeling like another roil of pleasure with a healthy dose of indigestion. She felt it pass between their lips, like smoke from a shared cigar.
Oh, what intimacy. Oh, what secrets. Their father once received French cigars as a gift and Thomas swiped one to try himself. He let Sofia try a puff and Sofia had coughed and sputtered, the smoke so much less pleasant than smoke from a pipe. Later, Sofia caught Thomas sharing the cigar with the daughter of a merchant whose father had come to discuss business with the Lord Blancheford. The girl took a long draw from the cigar, her hand curled around the back of Thomas's neck. She pulled him in close as though to kiss, and blew the cigar smoke from her mouth into his. Thomas had swallowed it, eyes dark, and then pulled her into the shadows of the house.
Sofia had always wondered what it was like, that intimate transfer, smoke from one mouth to the next. She understood now. She felt it pass between them, a wisp of a thing, like a gasp, like sigh, like a moan. She heard the echo of it as it passed from her lips to Nell's waiting tongue. Nell's gasp, Nell's sigh, Nell's moan.
Sofia pressed closer, her mouth searching Nell's, her tongue sucking at Nell's tongue, waiting, wanting, for Nell to pass it back, to gasp, to sigh, to moan.
It didn't come. Beneath her Nell stiffened. Beneath her, Nell grew hard.
"That's it then," Nell said.
Sofia froze. "What?"
Nell took Sofia by the shoulders, pushed Sofia off of her until Sofia crumpled into a little heap onto the floor. Nell was on her feet before Sofia realized what was happening. Only then did Sofia realize what she'd lost. Only then did she feel the emptiness in her gut, the weakness in her limbs. She pressed her hand to her stomach, moaned long and low, and then she pushed herself up from the floor. She stumbled on unsteady feet.
"You're mine," Sofia said. "Both of you, you're—"
"Thanks for that," Nell said, cutting her off. She turned away, then thought better of it. Coming back, she pushed Sofia against the edge of the table, kissed her again, a firm press of those lips. “I’ll never forget this.” And then she winked and left Sofia alone in the center of the empty cottage.
"No," Sofia said, stunned by what had just transpired. "Nell?"
The sound of a horse, the hoofbeats retreating. Sofia pushed herself away from the table. She rushed out the door, the forest dark around her.
"I got you!" Sofia shouted after Nell, screamed out to the dark and the trees and the magic, the magic that seemed to laugh back. "I had you!"
She was too late.
Nell and her fairy were gone.