The Autumn Castle (64 page)

The rain was easing outside as Christine, Mayfridh, Jude, Gerda, and Pete waited in Jude’s apartment for the lights to come
back on. Gerda hunched over Mandy’s memoir by candlelight, flicking through the last pages, while Mayfridh explained to Jude
and Pete how Hexebart had finally given back the royal magic. Christine sat, numb, on the sofa. With a weary sigh, Mayfridh
sat next to her. An uneasy stiffness filled the space between their bodies. There was a hum and the lights blazed back to
life. A few moments later, Fabiyan bounded up the stairs and into the apartment.

“I will go upstairs in little while and switch off boiler,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“No hurry,” Gerda said. “We’d better make sure Mandy’s good and dead.” She held up the notebook. “I don’t know if they’ll
ever find his remains, but I think we’re safe if they do.”

“Why’s that?” Pete asked.

“The last line he wrote:
‘Farewell. I go to a better place.’
It sounds like a suicide line. That, along with all the ramble about faeries, should well and truly divert suspicion away
from a cabal of witless artists like us.” She placed the book carefully on the coffee table. “I feel completely overwhelmed.”

“Is there any other way to feel after you’ve watched a witch and a faery hunter boiled alive in a vat?” Pete said. “Mayfridh,
will your
believe
spell wear off and make us all go nuts?”

“I don’t think so. I think once you’ve believed, you’ll always believe.”

“Are you going to go home?” Jude asked Gerda.

“To Stockholm? Indeed. As soon as I can get a flight. What about the rest of you?”

“I have already booked train for day after tomorrow,” Fabiyan said.

“I’m going to hang out at the airport until they find me a seat,” Pete said. “Jude? You and Christine missed your flight on
Sunday, will you still . . .”

Jude shrugged. “I’m not hanging around here.”

They all turned to Mayfridh.

“And you, Mayfridh?” Christine asked. “When do you have to leave?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I want to fetch my mother from the hotel and take her back to her place tonight,
get her settled in, and say good-bye. And then . . .”

“You’ll forget all this, won’t you?” Jude asked.

Mayfridh nodded.

“I wish I could forget,” he said wistfully.

Mayfridh looked as though she were about to say something, then thought better of it. “I’d better go,” she said. “I don’t
have much time.”

“Stop by tomorrow on your way to the passage,” Pete said. “Say good-bye properly.”

She smiled tightly. “I’ll see.”

As she left, Gerda yawned widely and picked up the memoir again. “Come on, Fabiyan. Let’s go turn off the vat and put this
notebook back.”

“I’ll come,” said Pete.

“Do you need any help?” Jude asked.

“No, you two stay here and . . .” Gerda shrugged, didn’t finish the sentence.

Within minutes they had all left, the apartment door had closed, and Christine was alone with Jude. She felt trapped inside
herself with anger and pain. Jude slid onto the sofa next to her. It seemed he didn’t know what to say either.

Finally, she turned to him. “Do you still intend to marry me?”

He looked startled. “Yes. Of course.” But he didn’t sound sure, not anymore.

“Okay, then. Before we get married, is there anything you want to tell me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there something you need to get off your chest? Something you haven’t told me?”

His dark eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why do you think that? Has somebody said something to you?”

“Jude, just tell me. If there is something you’ve concealed from me, tell me now. I want to hear it from your lips. I don’t
know what I can forgive if it goes too long unspoken.”

His eyebrows curved up and a look of guilty pain crossed his face. “Oh, Christine. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, it just happened.”

Seeing him in distress softened the edge of the anger. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know I’d understand an accident?” she
said.

“I fell in love with her, Christine,” he said. “And when you weren’t here and she was, I just—”

Christine bolted upright, startled. “What? What are you talking about?”

Jude’s face took on a bewildered expression. “What are you talking about?”

“You and Mayfridh . . .” she sputtered. “You . . .”

He was nodding. “Yes. Isn’t that what Gerda told you?”

“Gerda didn’t tell me anything.” So not only had Jude betrayed her and lied to her, Mayfridh had too. “Did this happen before
I sacrificed my hand to help her, or after?”

“Before,” Jude said softly. “And after. But don’t be angry with her, be angry with me. I’ve let you down, I’ve—”

“Oh, shut up, Jude. Just shut up.” She stood, fished the engagement ring out of her pocket and handed it to him. “I’m sick
of your self-pity. I’m sick of your egotistical nobility.”

“Christine, don’t do this. We’ll get over it. I want to marry you. Mayfridh’s gone, I belong with you.”

“The worst thing, Jude, is that you don’t even know why I’m angry.”

“You’re angry because—”

“Don’t!” she shrieked. “Don’t even pretend for a moment to understand me. I
know
what you did, Jude. I
know.
So you slept with Mayfridh? What’s one small betrayal like that? Really?”

Jude shook his head. “Christine, I don’t follow.”

Seconds ticked past. Christine felt her heart thumping in her throat, her face felt hot. Despair and resentment choked her.

“I could have forgiven you for killing them,” she said at last. “I can never forgive you for making me your charity project.
You took my dignity from me.”

The blood drained from his face. His mouth moved but no sound came out.

She stalked toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he squeaked.

“I need to talk to Mayfridh.”

“Christine—”

She turned, held out her silver hand in a “stop” gesture. “Don’t come near, don’t follow me. I can look after myself.”

She slammed the door behind her and raced down the stairs. The pain in her back pulled her up on the front step. Rain cooled
the hot blood flushing her face as she walked down to Friedrichstrasse to find a taxi.

Diana sighed as Mayfridh helped her through the front door of the house at Zehlendorf.

“I honestly thought I might never be coming back,” she said.

Mayfridh slid Diana’s suitcase inside and closed the door behind her. “We need to talk about that, Mum.”

“Have you reconsidered? Can you take me with you?”

Mayfridh felt the familiar rush of guilt. “I still don’t know.”

“It’s Jude, isn’t it?”

“I’ve asked him to come with me. He’s said no, but—”

“But you hope he’ll change his mind.”

“Tonight, he said something that gave me hope.”
I wish I could forget.
Until he had spoken those words, Mayfridh had accepted that she had to let him go and take Diana with her back to Ewigkreis.
Now the decision was not so clear. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Mum. It’s not even that I don’t love you as much as Jude.
But I have to think about my kingdom. About heirs, about the future.” This was only partially true, but she saw no reason
to bruise Diana with the whole truth: that everyone ran second to Jude in her heart. Deep down, she hoped at any moment to
hear the phone ring, for him to contact her to tell her he’d changed his mind.

Diana shook her head sadly. “I’m tired. I was having such a nice dream when you came by and woke me.” She smiled. “I’m glad
you’re back safely. Will you be leaving in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

“Me too.” Her body was heavy with magic, with the responsibility that it brought. It terrified her to return to Ewigkreis
with it, to be the sole guardian of such a burden. All the years that Hexebart had hoarded it, Mayfridh had been left to cultivate
a carefree heart. Now the thought of the empty castle, the quiet fields, became nightmarish: a hollow place to fill with years
of duties and obligations. Her mother’s house here in Zehlendorf was so warm, so loving and free by comparison. “I’ll miss
you so much.”

“Shh, now. Save all that for the morning,” Diana said, extending a gentle finger to Mayfridh’s lips.

A knock on the door made them both jump.

“Don’t answer,” Diana whispered urgently.

“It’s all right, Mum. Hexebart is gone. Mandy is gone.” It was Jude, it had to be Jude.

Diana shrank back in the hallway as Mayfridh went to the door and opened it.

“Christine?”

“I need to talk to you.” Her hair and clothes were wet, and she wore an expression of rancor and resolve.

Mayfridh turned. “Go on, Mum. Go up to bed. I’ll wake you in the morning.”

Diana tried a smile and headed upstairs, still slow on her bandaged feet. Mayfridh held the door open for Christine. “Come
in, then.”

“No. You come out. I want to walk.”

“It’s cold and it’s wet.”

“It matches my mood,” Christine said. “Come on.”

Mayfridh shrugged and stepped out of the warm pool of yellow light into the dark, drizzly outside. They walked in silence
down the path and up the empty, cobbled street. Rain caught in her hair and pasted her clothes to her skin.

“Christine?” Mayfridh said, after five minutes had passed and Christine still hadn’t said anything.

“Over there,” Christine said, pointing to a little stone church.

“All right.” Mayfridh followed her across the road and through the iron gates. Christine ascended the steps and sat down on
the stoop, just behind the dripping eaves. Mayfridh joined her. A gust of wind shook raindrops from nearby branches. A car
sped past, a brief light in the darkness.

“Okay, listen to me,” Christine said, turning to Mayfridh with an urgent gaze. “I know everything, okay? I know everything
about Jude, and about you.”

Mayfridh hung her head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do you love him?”

Mayfridh started to mumble something about passing attractions and the heat of the moment, then decided that Christine deserved
better. She deserved for someone to tell her the brutal truth. She lifted her head to meet Christine’s gaze. “Christine, I
love him with a passion so primal that I can’t give words to it.”

“He’s in love with you,” Christine said. “He told me so.”

“Oh.”

“I love him too, Mayfridh. I love . . . I love his eyes, and his hands and how sometimes they’re dirty with paint.” Christine’s
eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back. “But he doesn’t love me.” Her voice trailed to a whisper.

“I think he does, but in a different way from—”

“He doesn’t love me,” Christine said forcefully. “He feels sorry for me, he feels
responsible
for me. He feels no passion or desire for me.”

Mayfridh didn’t answer. They sat on the church step for a long time while the drizzle fell around them, their shoulders huddled
against each other for warmth.

At length, Christine drew a deep breath. “Mayfridh, I came to ask you to take me with you.”

Mayfridh pressed her hands to her eyes. “Oh, no.”

“Is it a possibility? I could be without pain. I could forget Jude and all he’s done to me.”

Mayfridh could have laughed. She had two people in the queue for passage back to Ewigkreis, neither of them the one she wanted
to take. Then a new thought—or perhaps a thought she had entertained before and dismissed—began to circle around her mind.
A way for her to be with Jude, with her mother. A way for Christine to be released from her grief and pain. A way for Mayfridh
to be relieved of the terrifying burden of her sovereignty. The cost was dear, very dear. But all around her people had sacrificed
themselves for her life and her happiness. A restitution was due.

“Mayfridh?” Christine was asking. “Is it possible?”

Mayfridh took Christine’s good hand in her own. “Christine, how would you like to be the queen?”

Mayfridh paced up and down her white chamber, window to door, waiting for Eisengrimm’s return. Ordinarily, she would be thrilled
to be excluded from a meeting of officials, but today she wished she could be there as they discussed her future. She stopped
at the window; the birch was almost naked. How could she stand it if they said no? How could she stay in this bare, empty
place forever? How could she forget about Jude?