gate in the cemetery wall. She placed a few flowering branches on a grave. Maybe it was the sight of her that made him think of Fox, for that was what she would do. Though it was more likely she’d put a bunch of wild flowers on his grave. Violets or primroses. Those were her favourites.
He turned around and walked towards the gate.
No. He would not search for an hourglass. Even if he turned back time, everything would just happen again, exactly the same way. And things had turned out well, at least for his brother.
Jacob opened the gate and looked up at the hill where the tower stood out against the morning sky. Should he go back and tell Will how things were standing with him?
No. Not yet.
First he had to find Fox.
It was to her he owed the truth, more than to anyone else.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN VAIN
The Dark Fairy flinched. Jacob Reckless. She didn’t want to see his face any more. All the fear on it, the pain . . . she could feel death, drawn to him by her name, like a wound on his white skin.
This was not her revenge. Even though the pond that showed her his fear was the same one where he had turned her skin to bark.
Her red sister was probably seeing the same images, on the lake that had spawned them both. What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn’t know much about love.
The pond turned dark, like the sky it reflected, and then her face was all she saw trembling on the waves. They distorted it, as though her beauty was dissolving. So? Kami’en no longer saw her anyway. All he saw was the swollen belly of his human wife.
The sounds of the city drifted into the nocturnal garden.
The Dark One turned around. She no longer wanted to see; not herself, nor her sister’s unfaithful lover. At times she even longed for the leaves and the bark he’d put on her.
He looked nothing like his brother.
The moth that landed on her shoulder was like a sliver of night on her white skin. Yet even the night now belonged to the other. Kami’en now slept more and more often by the side of his doll-faced princess.
What did her sister want with all that fear and pain? They would never bring back the love.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHANUTE
Along the road to Schwanstein, the workers were already crowding the gates of the weaving mill. Sirens were calling the morning shift to work, and as their wailing battled with the sound of church bells in the early morning, Jacob could barely calm the old horse Alma had lent him. The mare pricked her ears as though the Dragons had returned, but she was hearing only the modern times. The howling of sirens. The ticking of clocks. Machines wanted to run, and they ran fast.
Many of the men shivering in front of the gate looked up at Jacob as he rode past. The treasure hunter who always had some gold in his pocket, who came and went and did as he pleased, and who knew neither the toil nor the tedium that galled their lives. On any other day he would have understood the envy on their tired faces, yet on this morning Jacob would have gladly swapped with any one of them, even if that meant fourteen hours of hard labour for two copper coins an hour. Any life was better than death, wasn’t it?
It was a ridiculously beautiful morning. The flushing trees, the fresh green . . . even the old mare’s hide seemed to smell of spring. Pity. Dying in winter might have been a little less hard, but Jacob doubted he had that much time left.
A boy was sleeping by the side of the road, his bundle clutched to his chest so that the Thumblings didn’t steal what little he owned. Jacob had not been much older when he first came to Schwanstein, but thanks to Alma he’d at least been better nourished.
The pointy gables had looked like one of the illustrations in his grandparents’ yellowed fairy-tale books, and the coal soot in the air had smelled so much more exciting than the exhaust fumes in the other world. Everything had smelled of adventure: the leather harnesses on the carriages, even the horse manure on the grimy cobblestones and the butcher’s scraps that were being picked