“There are fewer stars to be had in London, it is true,” Elias observed. He squeezed her arm—as much for his own comfort as for hers, Dora thought. They came to a door that led outside, and she saw that it was a way into the same garden where she had tried to wash her dress in a fountain. Clearly, one or both of them had started in that direction from sheer familiarity. Dora smiled and opened the door, stepping out into the night.
The slight drizzle had long since cleared up, though the grass was damp beneath their feet. There were still stars, Dora thought, as she craned her head to look upward. The stars were not as bright or as numerous here as they had been in Lockheed—though why that was, she couldn’t be sure. Dora stumbled over her feet a few times, dizzy with the distance; Elias reached out to flick her sharply on the ear, but this didn’t draw her attention in the way that he had probably hoped.
“I forget that you don’t react as a normal person sometimes,” Elias muttered. “At least keep your eyes on your feet while we walk. You might turn an ankle, and then where will we be? I know a great many spells, but fantastical healing is not among them.”
Dora looked back down to keep track of her steps until they’d rounded the bench and settled safely onto it. “My apologies,” she said, as Elias set the lantern onto the fountain in front of them and sat back down beside her.
Elias glanced sideways at her. There was a newly troubled expression on his face, and Dora pursed her lips. “You should simply say whatever you are worried about,” she told him. “I will hardly mind it, either way.”
Elias sighed and reached up to run his fingers back through his messy hair. “I am not entirely certain myself,” he admitted. “I think... I am worried that you think terrible things of me. And perhaps those things are right. I do not know anymore.”
Dora considered him with faint surprise. “I do not think terrible things of you,” she said. “Though I am surprised that my opinion should worry you at all, you may safely cease any apprehension on that score.”
Elias rubbed at his jaw uncomfortably. “Nevertheless, I... feel the need to explain to you certain things. I have never told another soul about them—but perhaps they have begun to eat at me too much.”
Dora raised a brow at him. “If you insist on telling me tonight,” she said, “then you will have only told half a soul. Perhaps that shall make it easier.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Elias’ face at that. “Perhaps,” he said. “I suspect other reasons to be at play, however.” Before Dora could ask him what he meant by that, he cleared his throat. “I am... not a magician, Dora. Or rather, I am not just a magician.” His eyes flickered towards her chest, where the pair of scissors would normally lay—but Dora had taken them out and put them beneath her pillow, and they were not there. Elias frowned at their absence, but he did not otherwise remark on the circumstance. “I was born in faerie. Or else... perhaps the faerie that called me his son stole me before I could remember. I do not know exactly what I am, except that I am surely not all human, and surely not all faerie.”
Dora considered this seriously. The revelation ought to have frightened her, she thought, given how much of her life had been altered by just one encounter with a faerie. But she could not bring herself to be even distantly afraid of Elias at this point. “That is why people say that your magic is impossible,” she said slowly. “Because you are really capable of things similar to Lord Hollowvale.” Dora paused. “But you and he are nothing alike, Elias. Lord Hollowvale was quite evil. He had no concept of mercy or pity. I cannot imagine him ever becoming anguished over another person’s suffering.”
Elias frowned at this. “But that is part of why I left,” he said. “The faeries there are all so cruel and thoughtless. I do not know that they mean to be, but it is what they are.” He looked away from Dora uncomfortably. “I had hoped that England would be better. But it is so much worse, in some respects. At least faeries have no sense of their own evil—but humans know quite what they are about, and this is still how they choose to arrange things.”
“But if you grew up in faerie,” Dora asked him, “then how did you end up in the war? You must not have had concept of yourself as an Englishman… so why go fight the French?”
Elias smiled bitterly. “I was still young when I left faerie,” he said. “I had no concept of England at all before I got here. I ended up in the workhouses, in fact. Everyone was starving because of the taxes from the war. I wasn’t starving myself, mind you—I was quite good at stealing what I needed. But I heard so many people say that all this misery was because of the French—that they were simply evil, causing every awful thing that fell upon the English. I didn’t know what lies were yet, since faeries cannot lie. I believed that if I vanquished the French, then perhaps everything would be better.”
Dora sighed heavily. “Oh dear,” she murmured. “I suppose I can see how all of that worked out.”
“The French were never the problem,” Elias agreed. “Or at least, they were not the whole of it. When I came back and got my title, I suddenly had access to an entirely different level of society. I thought that all of England had suffered from the French. But that was not true. The aristocrats never failed to thrive—and
