Author's Note: Oh wow, this got a bit unwieldy, sorry. It was actually supposed to be longer (if you can imagine), with a couple more scenes at the end, but those started fleshing out into something heftier than I'd anticipated, so it's getting a separate chapter. That part still needs some work though, and my life is currently kind of imploding lmao, so I hope to have it written soon but can't make any guarantees. Thanks in advance for bearing with me!

Also, there are a couple parts of this chapter that I am very very pleased with-and a couple of parts that I'm a bit less pleased with. My brain is currently mush and if I spend any more time revising tonight it will probably give out on me, but just a heads up in case you pop back in and things look slightly different. But no big changes, I promise, just a few phrasing issues and descriptions that've been giving me trouble. I've actually been meaning to go back through this whole story and do a similar sort of refresh on the older chapters, since my writing has grown and changed in a lot of ways since I first started working on this (also, how was that 4+ years ago? Yeesh). But that sounds like a job for someone with a lot more stamina than I've got, so I likely won't even try until it's all complete.

Anyway, I'm shutting up now and going to bed. Thank you so so much for reading! Please let me know what you think, and enjoy!


February 1817

" Georgiana! "

At first she ignored the sound, refusing to trust her own senses. She had spent so many nights in this ugly place that she no longer expected anything she encountered here to be remotely real. The Fire had never been a welcome visitor in the Other Lands, and Georgiana's first forays had been marred by visions of Gavin Matheson, dead or dying on some distant foreign battlefield, or swollen and bloated with death but shambling toward her all the same, a pleading look upon what remained of his once-handsome face.

Over time, that not-Gavin had transformed, the horrid creatures who amused themselves with her torment using their sorry excuse for magic to discover what might best distress her. Red-gold hair had lengthened, darkened to jet-black; his wide and hearty body had hollowed into one lean and hardy; the face had thinned, the nose had lengthened, and something in it seemed to have twisted in some indefinable way.

If the goal was to deter her from venturing further into this wretched land, the visions were certainly effective. She would long ago have fled this place and its grotesque reminders of her human lover's inevitable mortality, never to return, were it not for her love for her cousin and her sworn duty to aid in recovering his wife.

If the goal, however, was to harm her in some way—to wound her with grief and nightmares and misery and the like—then it had surely failed. It had only made her furious .

Yet there was little enough she could do about it. Even now, traveling as she was through this dense and impenetrable forest, trees heavy-laden with visions of the flesh and bones of the man she loved, she could not simply burn it to the ground as she so dearly wished to. To ignite even the smallest leaf on the youngest tree—indeed, to interact in any tangible way with this land and its horrible magic—would be to open herself to its power. It was a risk she could scarcely afford to take if she were ever to succeed.

Still, for all its mimicry, all its sights and scents and sounds, for all its hideous insight into the depths of her own heart, this land did not know her name . It especially could not know what it was that he always called her.

" Ana! " came his voice again, and she gasped and whirled on the spot and took off, racing between the trees, following the sound back along the path she'd traveled and through the fire in the entrance hall of Starecross.

She threw her body back together quickly; her barely-formed feet stumbled on the grate, and she fell face-first into the warm chest and waiting arms of John Childermass with a cry of his name.

" Ana ," he sighed, holding her fast. He even smelled as he always did in her memory, of wool and frost and horse and spice and tobacco-smoke, and she was already crying by the time she found her feet and pulled back just far enough to look up into his face—and gasp .

"Your face—! "

"It's nothing," he said of the bloody laceration that split his skin from eye to mouth. "Ana, are you alright?"

"I— I'm fine ," she gasped, trembling as he traced his fingers up her cheek and into her hair, as he rested his forehead against hers. "But I must go back. Jonathan —he has gone to seek Norrell."

"Aye, and he's found him. I was cast out just before, or I'd be in that darkness with them, I wager."

"Wh— Cast out? John, what ? "

He shook his head, pulling back from her with such evident reluctance it nearly set her to crying again. "There's things that need doing first, and then I'll tell you all. I have something that belongs to her ladyship. Something she has long missed."

It only took her a moment's thought to consider what he could have of Emma's more important than answering her questions. "Oh, Christ ," she swore, covering her mouth with trembling fingers.

"Aye," he said, and turned to look at something over her shoulder. "Now, will you do me the kindness of taking me to her?"

"Oh, but..."

"I mean her no harm, Mr. Segundus. And I believe I may be able to do her some good. I swear it by Bird and Book."

"I cannot take you to her," said Segundus, as Georgiana caught her breath and tried to still her shaking hands. She did not know how long she had been in the fire, how long it had been since last she ate or drank. But she could not rest 'til Arabella was freed. "I do not mean I am unwilling—I mean I cannot . Charles will lead us."

Childermass frowned and looked at her curiously, but she could only shake her head. "It started some days ago. There is a magic here; you should be careful, too," she said, taking his arm as they fell into step behind Segundus and Charles—lovely, solid Charles, who had taken all the strangenesses the residents of this house had accumulated well in stride, and who had taken it upon himself to lead poor Segundus around so kindly and carefully ever since this particular trouble started.

Their little company did not make it far. They had not even left the entrance hall before Childermass was swaying from her grasp, staring wide-eyed at visions around him she could not see, then sinking to his knees upon the ground. "Stop! Stop!" he cried.

"Oh, it affects you badly," said Segundus. "Worse even than me."

"Close your eyes," Georgiana told him, laying a hand on his umarred cheek, fully worried now—she had never seen him so bad as this. He closed his eyes, and managed three steadying breaths, so she took his arm and put it about her shoulders, and wrapped her own about his waist, and helped him to his feet. "There, now, lean on me. I'll lead you true."

He nodded his head, and swallowed hard, and let her guide him out of the hall and around the corner.

"There you go," she murmured softly, trying not to let him hear how he'd frightened her. "I've got you, John. Now, we've some stairs to go up. First one's here, that's it. There we go."

They were nearly halfway up when he turned to her, eyes tightly closed, and said, "I can still see you, Ana." His mouth hung open, brow raised in something like surprise, something like...awe. "How bright you are, my girl."

She trembled for an altogether different reason, now—how long had it been since last she saw him, since last he'd called her his? The past months had been a blur—she did not know what day it was. Oh, how she'd missed him...

But she could not yet afford to let herself indulge in the luxury of his strong body leaning into hers, of his heavy arm about her shoulders, of his face so near, pale and bloodied as it was. She placed a cautious hand against his chest, and told him, "We're nearing the top step now. One more... There you go. Almost there, my love."

He squeezed her close the rest of the way, and only hesitantly released her once they reached Emma's rooms. There he opened his eyes and stood blinking at Georgiana; he lifted a hand to her cheek, resting the pad of his thumb against her lips for far too short an instant—before remembering where they were, and in whose company, and withdrawing his touch.

With a soft sigh, she stepped away and moved around the bed. There was a plate on the side-table with the remains of breakfast, and she did not care that it was Emma's and unfinished. She crammed the hard crust of bread into her mouth, bit into the half-eaten apple, even swallowed down the dregs of lukewarm coffee. Not much, but more than she'd had.

She took another bite of apple, and idly half-listened to the conversation behind her—to Emma's last attempt to describe her torment, to the two Johns conferring on what they should do about it... There was little and less that she could contribute. In the time since her first visit to Jonathan in Venice, Georgiana had tried only twice more to tell Segundus what she knew, and both times had managed only to say more of her mother's final days.

A particularly clever bit of cruelty, that. No faffing about with claims of madness, no nonsensical storytelling—simply filling her mouth with words so awful to her psyche that she would not even try to find ways around it to avoid the slightest chance of saying more. To make matters worse, she had no way of knowing anything at all about her mother before the Fire came and made its bargain, so she could not even determine whether the things the curse made her say were true or not. She tried to tell herself it did not matter—tried to tell herself she did not wish to know, even if every horrid detail was correct.

She would take great pleasure in the destruction of the creature who had done this to her. She could only hope that she would be able, in some way, to help.

She finished off the apple, and turned to find her friends arranged in a strange tableau: Charles, anxious by the door; Emma sitting up in bed, left hand outstretched; Segundus with a single finger in his hands, looking nauseated and worried; and Childermass, determination written all over his bloodied face, holding a snuff-box the color of heartache. " Do the magic, Mr. Segundus ."

It was certainly not her kind of magic. Yet there was an elegance to Mr. Segundus's casting the like of which Georgiana had never seen before—not from Strange's bold and brash experimenting, nor from Childermass's efficient and practical shadows. She had never had cause to witness Norrell's magic being done, but she did not think he could ever have hoped to manage a fraction of this beauty and wonder.

It pleased her to know, despite all she had seen and done and remembered, that magic could still surprise her.

And so she watched, surprised and pleased and reverent, as bone and tendon and muscle and vein and skin knit themselves back together, and Emma was once again made whole.

"I have been enchanted! " the woman cried out, equal parts anguished and enraged. "Bargained away for the sake of a wicked man's career!"

"Good God!" Segundus gasped. "My dear Lady Pole—"

"No," Childermass said, grabbing the other magician's arm and holding him back. "Let her speak."

"I have been dead within and almost-dead without! And not only me! Others suffer even now! Mrs. Strange and Stephen Black!"

" Yes ," Georgiana leapt onto the bed and put her hands on Emma's shoulders, turned the woman to face her. " Where are they? "

The look in her eye was fearsome, triumphant. " Lost-Hope! "

" Oh ! " She had tried to visit that place a hundred times or more, but had seen no sign nor any route inside, and always been turned away. She was beyond words, even of gratitude, so she leaned in and kissed the lady swiftly, and turned to find the men in the room staring at her in varying degrees of surprise.

She clambered off the bed, took Segundus's face in her hands, and kissed him too, for the gorgeous magic he had done. She did not think Charles would appreciate a kiss from her, so she let him be and turned to her husband.

The reckless joy fled her upon sight of the expression on his face, the worry in his eyes as they gazed into hers, and then down at the box in his hands, somehow knowing what she was thinking.

"John—" she began, but he shook his head, and thrust the box into her palm.

"Take it," he rasped, voice gone tight.

She should not have tarried even a moment, should have fled right then, but she could not leave him like this. For a moment, she stood silently, turning the box over in her hand—it was very cold, in a way nothing in this world should be, especially not after spending two hours or more in his pocket, so close to the warmth of him.

"I can use it as a handsel," she told him, though it was obvious he had worked out this much, at least, already. "And Strange has laid a road—you know he is very good at those."

"But must you be the envoy?" he asked— pleaded —snatching up her free hand and pulling it to his lips. "Let me go in your stead."

She blinked away the tears forming in her eyes, shaking her head. "She does not know to trust you. And no one can travel as far as I, nor as fast."

"I do not like it."

"I know," she admitted softly. "But I must help her."

"I know." He kissed the back of her hand, his big, dark eyes gazing at her with such resigned sadness that her resolve nearly crumbled at the sight. "But then you must return to me."

" I will ," she gasped, and surged forward to kiss him—not caring about the blood on his face, nor the people who could see them. She cared only that she had yearned for the taste of his mouth and his breath in her lungs for so long, now, that the passage of time had ceased to matter. The whole of her life seemed to boil down to the time before she had ever kissed John Childermass—to the dreadfully scant collection of moments in which she had kissed John Childermass—to the aching, interminable period in which she had longed to kiss John Childermass and been unable to do so. She was more than ready for a new period to begin; she could not have more of him until Arabella was free, but for now she would have this.

"I will come home to you," she said when she had no choice but to break apart, pressing her face to his unmarred cheek, gasping for breath against his jaw. "I swear it by the ring you gave me."

He nodded, stubble tickling against her swollen lips, and buried a hand in her hair to guide her back far enough to meet his eyes again. "Then go ," he breathed, flinching as though the words pained him. "And hurry. And be safe, my Ana."

"I will." She swiped her lips against his once more for good measure, then turned before she could conjure any other reasons to linger there with him, and ran into the fireplace.


There was no true fire in the Other Lands—only an illusion of the real thing, a glamor like all else, pasted over such a dreadful, dreary place. But the spirit within her was as much magic as it was heat and light, and it could burn wherever it chose.

She chose so now, bringing forth all that magic and heat, and all the scant fuel she had gleaned from a crust of bread and half an apple, and all the greater fuel she could muster from her own rage and sorrow and fury. It was far more than enough, and she burned bright and hot and felt this dark reflection of a world cower away from her. She pulled the flames into the shape they knew best, and the Firebird spread its wings.

The land shrank back from her, the signposts she knew—the Blue Castles, the Fourteen Towers, the City of Iron Angels—stretching further and further from her reach; the memory of wind blew hard at her, buffeting the flames and trying to drive her back. But this place and its inhabitants had made her angry , and now she set that anger loose, burning hot and flying fast enough to counter these paltry hindrances. She knew the name of where she needed to go. She had the box to guide her.

Lost-hope could not hide from her now.

Yet when she found it, the sight took her by surprise. Whatever was happening back in the world, it was rending the glamor of the brugh apart.

It was as though the house could not remember that it was not a hill, the hill that it was not a house. Was the structure built of stone, or mud? Was it plastered in gypsum, or overgrown with weeds? Were those windows, or fox-holes? Buttresses, or wind-swept trees? It could not seem to decide—and she watched, stunned to stillness, as the walls of a tower crumbled, and became a landslide. Was it all to come down?

If so, she could wait no longer. She blew through the doorway, the cave-mouth, down a warren of narrow corridors, following the sound of panicked voices until she burst into a larger den, a grand ballroom.

" Arabella! " she called.

The woman whirled at the sound of her name, the only human in the room with any remaining claim to the world she'd been taken from, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the brightness of the phoenix now circling her. " George? " she croaked. "Is that you? "

"The night Jonathan left for the peninsula, Bell, I made you a promise. Now I am here to keep it. Please, we must go!"

"Oh," her friend breathed, whirling around, seeing the panicked faces and disintegrating ballroom as if for the first time, her expression crumpling in worry, shock, disgust. " Oh! "

Georgiana looked too, trying to catch sight of anyone else who was out of place in this decrepit little hole in the ground—a man she had never met, with skin dark enough to rival her own. But all she could see were pale faces; and these were widening, sprouting fur, losing control of their own glamor. "Where is Stephen Black?"

Bell frowned, shook her head. "I— He left with the Gentleman, they went away! ...I think."

The creatures around them gasped and screeched as a column lost its grip on the roof above them and fell free, a gnarled tree-root crashing to the packed dirt floor beneath their feet. There was no more time.

" Follow me! " she cried, and Arabella listened, hiking up the skirt of her gown and running as fast as she could, shucking off the gaudy baubles and heavy jewelry that weighted her about the wrists and throat.

The house's corridors were winding, crumbling, but Georgiana burned bright, and Arabella followed the light, and the instant she placed a foot outside of the brugh, the road opened up beneath her.

"Don't look around!" George warned her. "Stay on the road! Follow me!"

Arabella did not answer, but wrapped one hand around a crimson-gold tailfeather and held up her skirts with the other, and ran as fast down that road as her lambskin slippers could carry her.

The country all round them was as menacing and horrid as always, fields and thickets strewn with false Childermasses and Stranges alike; but it did not dare to encroach on this magic road, did not put itself within reach of the Fire's rage. If Arabella took any notice of the sights at all, she said nothing of it until they caught sight of the strange blackness ahead, a rogue shadow cast upon itself, in the very skin of the world. "What is that?"

"A door! " Ana cried.

They flung themselves through.

Arabella, of course, managed to make this escape an elegant one, stepping down delicately from the mirror, to the chair pushed against it solely for this purpose, to the plush carpeting beneath.

Georgiana, on the other hand, suddenly freed from a world that breathed magic, without even a fireplace in which to manage her transformation, was thrust instantly back into her human body, shocked with the cold of being extinguished, momentum propelling her forward to land sprawled on the floor, the impact forcing all the breath from her lungs.

At least her clothing had made the journey with her—if there was anything worse for a respectable British family to endure in the midst of an already-quite-harrowing journey abroad than a flame-haired Black woman emerging from the mirror into their sitting-room, it would surely be a naked one. A small blessing, that, but she was grateful all the same.

She rolled onto her back, laid there panting to reclaim her breath for a moment before pushing up on her elbows to turn and meet Arabella's wide, wild eyes.

"This is Padua," the young Miss Greysteel was telling her. "In Italy."


Georgiana's instincts had been correct; the Greysteels, for all their kindness and generosity, had little idea what to make of her. She supposed it was to be expected, given the bitter quarrels with which they had parted before he left England, but it seemed Jonathan had said to them very little (if anything) of his Scottish cousins. It was only Arabella's urging that brought Dr. Greysteel and his sister to understand that she was no servant but rather an extended member of the Strange family, and a respectable lady in her own right. Their housekeeper, Bonifazia, did not appear to have understood this at all, and spent most of the day depositing her with fresh linens and downy pillows and bowls of broth to in turn give to Mrs. Strange. As grateful as she was for these ways to make herself useful, the assumptive obligation still rankled.

Still, everyone in the house had treated Arabella with the utmost charity, and for that Ana could not maintain much indignation for long. They had fed both women and clothed Arabella, though Georgiana was too tall for any of the ladies' dresses to fit and she would have to make do with her dark morning dress and one or two borrowed shawls, until something else could be procured. She did not much mind, though she was sorry to have left John's coat behind at Starecross, missing the weight of it about her shoulders and the comforting thrum of his magic against her skin.

Miss Flora Greysteel seemed determined to make both ladies her friends, particularly after the bit of magic Georgiana had performed at the fireplace, trying her best to pass through it to Hurtfew Abbey and see what had happened to Jonathan and why he had not yet come for his wife. But the curse still stood, stronger even than before, and would not allow her more than the barest glimpse of the man—and Flora had been so considerate and sweet in her efforts to lighten Arabella's spirits after this failure, that George could not help but think of the girl with fondness.

Even Minichello and the Greysteel's man, Frank, had been thoughtful and charitable, setting up a bedroom for Arabella to stay, and carrying a chaise longue up several flights of stairs from the sitting room, so Georgiana would be able to sleep at her side and keep an eye on her through the night.

She was curled up there now beneath a warm duvet, having waited until her friend had fallen asleep. The magic she had in mind she had done only once before, to contact Jonathan in Venice—but that time she had been an incorporeal consciousness adrift in the Other Lands. She had little idea what would happen to her physical body, here in the Greysteel's apartments in Padua, nor what dangers she might pose to her friend in such a state. So she pulled her knees up to her chin and put her arms around her legs, cradled against the back of the chair, and closed her eyes.

Inside herself, the Fire turned outward and reached , away across land and water and air, through every match and candle and lantern and hearth and oven and wildfire that burned between her and England, blazing past to those she knew best—to the fires of Starecross Hall, and John Childermass's pipe.

She saw him quite clearly. He was smoking, as she'd expected, and pacing before the fire in the room they had been using for a library. There were two chairs behind him: one empty, one occupied by John Segundus, a tartan draped across his shoulders and his nose in a book, very purposefully ignoring Childermass and his agitated circuit about the rug. A window had been left open, likely to release the smoke from the dozens of candles burning around them, far more than either needed to be able to see, even this late into the night.

George felt a pang of guilt and a swell of affection for them both, for their staying awake and lighting so many fires, keeping watch for her. She felt her body, back where she had left it, sigh.

John Childermass turned his gaze sharply to the hearth. " Georgiana? "

She had wanted to watch him a little longer—to admire his handsome features and long strides, the way his lovely dark hair had fallen free of its queue and hung in loose curls about his sharp cheekbones, how he'd undone his neckcloth and let the collar of his shirt open to allow a tantalizing peek at his strong chest—but the softness of his voice when he said her name and the annoyed little huff Segundus gave in response assured her this was not the first time he'd thought she might be there, and she would not let him be disappointed again. She held the fire to herself and lofted it free of the grate, molding it into the woman-shape she had used to speak with Strange. " John. "

He reached for her, knowing well that she would never burn him, but her body was not there and his hand passed through the flames without resistance. For a moment, his face was stricken, but then it hardened with resolve. "Ana, are you safe? Tell me where you are, and I will come."

She smiled and wished he could see her do so, hoped he could hear it in her voice as she answered, "I am well, my love. And Mrs. Strange, too. The road Jonathan laid led us out through a mirror in Italy, with a family he knew here."

"Oh!" gasped Segundus, and Ana and Childermass both jumped in surprise, already forgotten that he was there. "You are with the—er, the Greysteels, is it? I remember Strange mentioning the name."

"The very same," she told him.

"And—they are treating you well, miss?"

"They have received us with great kindness," she assured, "despite our sudden intrusion on their holiday. We have been very well looked after."

"I am glad to hear it," Segundus said, setting aside his book and rising to his feet. "And so will her ladyship be. I'll go see if she's awake, and let her know. Good-night, Childermass—and Mrs. Childermass."

"Good-night!" she called, watching him go, grateful for the opportunity to speak to John in private.

He was watching her carefully with his clever, dark eyes, but there was a weariness in them that she greatly disliked. "Where in Italy are you?"

"Padua," she answered, and he nodded.

"I'll set off in the morning," he said with absolute certainty. "The Admirals know me, I'll have no trouble finding a ship to bring me to you."

"Oh, John," she sighed, shaking her head. "I have no wish to be so far from you; but please, I could not bear to have you travel all this way."

He lifted a hand to what would be her cheek, left it hovering against the warmth of her flames for a moment. "If I came to Italy, I could kiss you," he said, voice low and rough. "And I could bring you home as my wife, and be your husband before all the world. We have no more reason to hide, Georgiana. Now I can keep every promise I made you."

"There is nothing I want more. But I would rather know you safe and sound in Yorkshire, than spend my weeks worrying about you lost at sea, where I could not come for you."

"And can you not come to me now? At least for tonight?"

Another shake of her head. "I am afraid to leave Mrs. Strange. She is...of fine health, but ill spirits. And I think she is still troubled with visions; she seems to have difficulty recognizing what is real."

"Lady Pole seems much the same," he said with a sigh. "Perhaps we should send her to Padua. They may be some comfort to each other."

"I do not think it could hurt. And Miss Greysteel seems eager to help. If Emma were to come here..."

"...Then you could come home?"

"I made a promise to keep Arabella safe," she said, nodding slowly. "And I do think she would be, in their care."

"I think you have more than upheld that promise, my girl," John said, reaching up to undo the tie about his hair, and she wished more than ever to be there in the flesh and able to run her fingers through it. "But if that is what it will take for you to feel your duty accomplished, I'll speak to Lady Pole in the morning. I do think she'd be amenable—she has no desire to return to Harley-street, that much is certain."

"No, I would not imagine so. She has not been as successful in finding a good husband as I was."

"Oh?" he asked, a teasing glint in his eye and a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You are satisfied with your selection, then?"

"Oh, I intend to be very well satisfied soon, John Childermass."

" Aye , that you shall be," he said, grinning now, leaning in closer to feel her heat against his skin. "How I've missed you, my girl. And I am my own man now. There's so much I wish to give you—anything you want, and more."

"All I want is you ."

"You have me. I'm yours for the taking, Georgiana Childermass."

She took a deep, shuddering breath, the fire flickering. Christ , how she wanted him, with all his ragged black hair and his heated dark eyes and that wicked grin and stubbled jaw and long bare neck, Adam's apple bobbing as he looked into her flames with such evident desire. Mrs. Strange would be fine for an hour or two, surely? With all the household there, to care for her? Georgiana would be back, she just—she needed to get her mouth on him...

But no, no —she could not abandon her friend, not in her time of need.

And if she went to John now... God, she might never leave his bed again.

With a sigh filled with regret, she took a step back. "I... Soon , John, I promise."

He nodded in return, his expression softening from that heated look to a gentler understanding. "I trust you. And I'll be here, when the time comes. Segundus agreed that I should stay—said he'd not turn me out of my own wife's home, or some such. I'll keep a fire burning for you."

"I love you, John."

"And I love you." He trailed a hand once more through her flames and said, "Please stay safe, my girl."

"I will. And you the same."

He nodded, withdrew his hand slowly. "I will."

With one last, long look at him, she returned the fire to its place.

Georgiana came back to herself, still curled up in the chaise, Arabella still sleeping in the bed beside her. In Padua, all was as well as could be. So she stretched out her legs and settled back against the pillow, pulled the duvet tighter around her shoulders, clutched her left hand and the ring she wore there close to her breast. Then, for the first time in longer than she really cared to remember, she let herself fall asleep—and hoped to dream of him.