A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

Author:Ava Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

“I just went on about how much I loved ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King,’” Effy said, so pleased by the outcome of her letter-writing efforts that she was beaming and blabbering, words coming out fast and eager. “I barely mentioned Myrddin at all—I didn’t want to offend him by even suggesting I might be more interested in Myrddin’s work than his own. I told you all it would take was some flattery.”

Effy looked at Preston expectantly, but he had gone silent, his brow furrowed as he stared at the letter. “I didn’t know that was your full name.”

In all her excitement, she’d forgotten that she had signed her letter to Blackmar as Euphemia. She’d done it intentionally. No one, not even her mother, not even her stiff and formal grandparents, called her Euphemia. But Effy had a childish, frivolous quality to it. She didn’t want Blackmar to think of her as frivolous. She wanted him to take her inquiries seriously. So she had used her real name.

Now she could see Preston’s mind turning, and her stomach shriveled. “Yes,” she said. “That’s my full name.”

“Do you mind if I ask—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unspeakably rude—” She had never heard him stammer like this. His face was flushed all the way to the tips of his ears. “You don’t have to answer, of course, and honestly, please feel free to hit me or call me a twat for asking at all, but—were you a changeling child?”

Effy let the room sink into silence. She had gone by her nickname for so long, she had almost forgotten the significance of her real one: that a saint’s name was the mark of a changeling.

She closed her left hand into a fist and opened it again. It really was an unspeakably rude question. No one asked. She was a good Northern girl from a good Northern family, and changeling children were a barbaric custom, practiced only by peasants in the Bottom Hundred.

“Yes,” she said finally, and she was surprised by how easy it was, to say that single word.

“I’m really sorry. It’s just that you mentioned being fatherless—” Preston ran a hand through his hair, looking positively miserable.

“It’s all right,” she said. That was easy to say, too. In fact, Effy realized, she could tell the whole story as if it had happened to someone else, and it would be completely painless. “My mother was my age, or somewhere near it, when she had me. My father was a man who worked at my grandfather’s bank—older. There was no wedding or proper courtship. It was an embarrassment to my grandfather that she ended up pregnant. He fired my father, banished him back to the South. He was from the Bottom Hundred—one of those upstart provincial geniuses.”

“I’m sorry,” Preston repeated desperately. “You don’t have to say any more.”

“I don’t mind.” Effy was elsewhere now, floating. Her mind had opened its escape hatch and she was gone. “My mother had me, but a child was such an inconvenience to everyone.

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