For Evermore: taylor swift x harry styles ff

Spying on the Saphyrs - Chapter 3

Song of the chapter: Soon you'll get better- Taylor Swift

Taylor

When Taylor awoke, everything hurt. Her knees were bruised, and her head throbbed. Her father wasn't in their room, and a strange uniform hung on the clothes rack like a poor replacement. Slipping out of her mattress she wobbled to the door, only to be stopped by Nursey. The royal governess/ nurse/ housekeeper stood in front of her, pudgy arms akimbo.

"You look like a positive fright, Miss Taylor,"

Taylor swallowed, licking her dry lips and running her fingers through her tangled hair. "Where is my father?"

Nursey stared, flushing a deep red. "Oh, Miss Taylor-''

The strain in her voice brought back the events at the teahouse. She recalled every horrifying second, right up till she blacked out.

"Can I... can I see him?"

"There's nothing left to see!" Nursey gritted out, flushing red and turning on her heel, as though she meant to escape.

Hopelessness, a rage like she had never experienced broke the dams inside Taylor. She lunged after Nursey, grabbing her arm. The small crescents of her nails dug into her sweaty flesh. Nursey howled, slapping at Taylor like she was some new species of ferocious insect.

"Bring me to him!"

***

Looking down at her father's face, contorted in anguish, Taylor wanted to scream and cry and kill something, all at the same time. But it seemed that she was frozen, numbed into place. Her father's face was chalk white, except for the stark blue veins that laced his forehead and neck. 

"It was nyacide." A deep voice boomed over her shoulder, and Chief Inspector Tomlin appeared beside her.

"I am so sorry for your loss. I know how close you and your father were." Weakly, she nodded, barely registering a word he said.

"We'd like to ask you some questions. Time is of the utmost importance in these cases."

Without a backward glance at the body lying on the autopsy table, Taylor allowed herself to be led away.

Harry

Harry didn't want to sound stuck-up, but he didn't understand the point of having seven stables full of thoroughbreds if you weren't allowed to ride any. The grooms had all given him pitying looks and told him to ask his father for permission. So there he was, waiting outside the throne room and trying not to eavesdrop on the king and his guests.

Who were they? Harry checked his watch. His father was usually having his afternoon nap at that time. (Everyone pretended like they didn't know but really it was so obvious).

His curiosity was overwhelming. He found himself speed-walking into the library, his wooden leg making a dull tap-tap on the wooden parquet as he knelt down, pulling at the large tapestry that hung on the marble wall. Behind it was a small peephole he had cut years ago with his Stone Gorer, on a dare from Marjorie, his friend. It was amazing that nobody had found it yet. Then again, it was well camouflaged. Harry's nails prised at the wall, finally dislodging the small pole of marble they had replaced like a cork. He pressed his eye to the peephole.

The king was slumped on the throne, crown skewed at a dangerous angle. Harry almost thought he was asleep until he noted his father's ashen face, and saw his eyes follow the figure pacing up and down the long carpet. Whoever they were, they were hidden from his view, the only clue to their identity a faint silhouette on the creamy wall. Unnaturally tall and thin, a skeletal form of lines.

King Liam's visitor stepped towards him, and into Harry's sight. His skin prickled. Harry had never seen a Saphyr in real life, only knowing what they looked like through painted pictures in his mythology textbook. But there was no painting that could convey the thin whiteness of his skin like he had been starved of life. The cruel sharpness of the Saphyr's angular limbs. It reminded him of the first time he saw a wolf. His shock when he realized the snarling mass of fur was nothing like his small wooden wolf. The fear he felt.

"I'm working on it. Don't worry." The king sounded unnaturally small and meek.

"Oh, I'm not worried. You should be the one worrying, Liam."

What had they come for? Some political parrying or some business consorting? Harry noted the lack of honorific when they addressed him. Liam. Even Harry referred to his father as "My Lord." Who were they, really?

And then they were gone, as quickly as if they had been swept away by the sea breeze.