Theodora did begin to cry at this—she wiped at her face with her sleeve, shivering with sobs. “How awful!” she said. “Then neither of us has been quite right for years and years! Have we both been miserable in our own way?”
Dora thought on this. “Perhaps not,” she said slowly. “I was very upset with my condition only minutes ago. But I was not nearly as trapped as you have been, and at least I have had some real company. Vanessa has been wonderful, and Elias—” Dora cut herself off, suddenly uncertain just what she ought to say.
Theodora stopped crying abruptly. She widened her eyes and clutched her hands to her chest. “Who is Elias?” she asked. “Oh dear. I feel so happy and so terrified all at once. Is that because you are in the room with me, and that is how we ought to feel?”
Dora looked down at her feet. “I am in love with him,” she said, since it seemed silly to try and hide the truth from herself. “But I fear that he does not feel the same way.” She frowned faintly at that. “I should have simply asked him. If I do manage to get back to England, I will surely do so.”
Theodora wavered on her feet. She sat down on the piano bench quickly, blinking away some overwhelming feeling. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, this is love then. How wonderful and terrible.” She looked up at Dora and pressed her lips together. “I have tried to escape before, you know. But this time, I truly must. I cannot imagine never seeing Elias again!” Theodora paused in confusion. “I do not even know him. What a strange circumstance this is.”
Dora nodded slowly. “I feel the same,” she admitted. “On both counts. Though you and I are certainly still connected, or else I would not have had one foot in faerie, which made me able to scry. And... oh. I must have scryed upon you by accident just now. That is how I ended up here. I was looking at the mirror and thinking desperately how much I wished to be a whole person again.”
“Yes, it would be lovely to be whole again!” Theodora sighed. “You have no idea how exhausting it is to always be emotional. I am always furious or heartbroken or terrified or... or sometimes I am joyful, but it is so rare to find anything to be joyful about here.” Theodora pushed back to her feet and crossed the distance to Dora, taking her by the hands. It was a surreal experience, to be sure. There was a slight tingle between them, and Dora felt a distant echo of fear in her chest—but it did not quite take root. Instead, it slipped away like a ship without an anchor.
“There is something missing,” Dora said. “I do not know how to knit us back together. But if we can get back to England, then I am sure that Elias will know what to do. He is the most talented magician in the country.”
She headed over towards a window on the far side of the piano and peered outside of it. The view overlooked a sprawling garden of white roses, all smothered in a thick mist. Beyond the garden, a large, forbidding building rose from the fog—but from this distance, she could only make out its general shape.
“We could climb out the window,” Dora suggested. “How far does Hollowvale extend through faerie? Do you know if there is some way back to England, if we walk far enough?”
Theodora knitted her brow with obvious irritation. “Climbing down was the very first thing that I tried!” she snipped. “I am you, after all. I walked to the very edge of Hollowvale—but by the time I had reached the borders, I was so weak that I couldn’t go on. I do not have a body of my own, and it is only Lord Hollowvale’s magic which sustains me.”
Dora blinked slowly. “No body?” she murmured. “But does that mean that I have no body either? Have I left mine behind in Hayworth House?” Now that Dora thought further on the matter, that only made sense. She had never brought her body with her when she scryed before, so why should now be any different? A new thought occurred to her as she considered this. “Perhaps if I were to scry upon myself again, I could get back into my body,” she said. “Does that sound reasonable?”
Theodora crossed her arms. “I know nothing about scrying,” she said tartly. “It was never touched upon in my lessons. If you think that it is reasonable, however, then I suppose that I think it is reasonable.”
Dora nodded at that. “Then all I should require is a mirror,” she said. “Do you know of any here?”
Theodora scowled. “I do not,” she said. “And isn’t that strange? You would think with how the marquess goes on and on about having one of every English thing, he would have at least one mirror here.”
Dora sighed. “Well,” she said. “We shall have to see what we can find. At the very least, I have no intention of waiting here until the marquess returns from his appointment.”
She began to search the window for a way of opening it—but before she could look very hard at all, Theodora picked up the piano bench and slammed it against the window glass with all her might, shattering the fine glazing into a thousand little pieces.
Mist trickled into the room like an exhaled breath. Dora expected it to feel wet, but instead it seemed to numb her slightly wherever it touched her skin. This did not alarm Theodora, who was already climbing outside the window and grabbing a nearby tree branch—so Dora followed calmly
