"Half a Soul"

Olivia Atwater's Regency fantasy story smartly plays with conventions from both genres, and does some deft gender role reversing besides.

• The elfin man gave her a kind smile. “You humans always miss the most important details,” he said. “It’s not your fault, of course. But your mother’s soul and yours are of the same bright thread.
• “Have you ever wondered what might happen if we bred a horse with a dolphin, Sir Albus?” Dora interrupted distantly.
• The noise would have been startling, if Dora were capable of being startled. It settled into her bones more readily than anything else had ever done, however—the biggest fly yet in the corner of the room.
• As she drifted off to sleep, she dreamt of angels on the London docks, filing up and down the pier and hustling crates of tea onto ships.
• “I would like the record to state that I am doing this only under great duress,” he told them both. <> “You may note it on my dance card later, if you like,”
• “I would have thought the situation was self-evident,” Dora told him calmly. “Does a man of your formidable knowledge really require the concept of laundry to be explained to him?” <> Elias pinched at the bridge of his nose with his fingers, sucking in a breath. “My dear Miss Ettings,” he said slowly. “You are standing in a viscount’s back garden in your unmentionables, washing your dress in a fountain. Have you truly no concept of the strangeness of your situation?”
• The words strange and unnatural added themselves to the small pile of miseries at the back of Dora’s mind.
• “I have often thought that I am capable of... of emotions with a long tail. I am not sure if that makes sense. I do not feel the shock of fear, but I can feel dread
• Dora didn’t say the thing that she was thinking. He is her favourite because he is broken. She feels she must make up for that with extra love, the same way that Vanessa feels for me.
• Dora thought on it for another moment. But whatever instinct had prompted her to ask was like a lily pad floating on the water without any sort of root. It existed, but it had no discernible cause.
• Elias watched the wall with a stoic sort of expression, rather than look at her as she spoke. “Iron,” he corrected her quietly. “It is bane to faeries, and anathema to all magic. I would appreciate it if you did not speak of it again, Miss Ettings.”
• Vanessa loved fiercely, and protectively, and she always did prefer to champion those she thought abandoned. But never, Dora realised, had her cousin ever exhibited love or even pity for anyone that she had not seen with her very own eyes.
• One half of the flowers had petals of an unearthly emerald green, which seemed to glow with their own whimsical sort of light. The other half were airy and insubstantial—and as she marvelled at them, Dora realised that they were crafted entirely from a silvery-grey smoke which seemed to waver in the drafty air of the townhouse. <> The flowers were, she thought, the exact colour of her eyes.
• Her eyes flickered to Albert’s silver right arm. “You are so very good at being temporarily unpleasant... somehow, you managed to convince me to forget what a generous, loyal man you can be, even with such a perfect physical reminder before me.”
• “No one gives what they could, Albert!” Elias hissed. “Everyone gives what they please—and certainly not without plenty of self-congratulations for their miserly gestures. With one hand, they raise grain tariffs, muster soldiers, and create the workhouses. With the other, they deign to save a few poor souls from the very hell they made. This country is mad. It’s rotten. It’s unthinkable, and none of you can see it.” He shook his head and shoved to his feet. There was a wild, frenetic despair in his manner that certainly had not been helped by his exhaustion. “I cannot eat a fine meal while some poor girl lays dying. It is not in me. But I suppose it is in you.”
• And if you trusted your friends enough to show that grief, instead of turning it to anger, you would not now be outside in the rain.” <> Elias stared at her. As Dora considered his face, she became convinced that there were tears there.
• “If you insist on telling me tonight,” she said, “then you will have only told half a soul. Perhaps that shall make it easier.”
• But I heard so many people say that all this misery was because of the French—that they were simply evil, causing every awful thing that fell upon the English. I didn’t know what lies were yet, since faeries cannot lie. I believed that if I vanquished the French, then perhaps everything would be better.”
• The aristocrats never failed to thrive—and still, they continue to thrive. They are the native faeries of England, wreaking havoc where they go and never failing to think worlds of themselves.”
• Dora sighed. “I begin to wonder if moral outrage has ever accomplished anything,” she murmured. “We do not seem to ever feel such outrage at all when it regards matters outside of these ballrooms.”
• The candles in the room all snuffed out in the space of an instant. Gasps and whispers rippled among the crowd—but they soon transformed into awed murmurs. Wavering pinprick lights kindled in the air, scattered like faerie dust across the ballroom. One floated just past Dora, and she reached out to touch it with rapt fascination. The light flickered against her skin, but it neither burned nor cooled where it touched. Instead, it caught briefly upon her fingers and then fluttered away again like a floating ember.
• When she looked back at Elias, there was a new warmth in his expression. “You are smiling,” he said softly. <> Dora blinked slowly. “I suppose I am,” she murmured, dimly surprised. And in fact, she could feel a distant, serene sort of smile on her face.
• What might Dora have been, if she had not lost that half of her soul? Would Auntie Frances have loved her more, if she could smile properly? Surely, Dora would have fallen in love more fully, with some man who loved her back exactly the same.
• The white rose petals wavered beneath her fingers like the mist that surrounded them. <> “Faerie stuff isn’t very certain of itself,” Theodora said from behind her. “It’s why the marquess prefers his English trophies, I think.”
• “We will not be making her a gown from moonlight, you cretins!” the baroness said sternly. “That has not been popular since last week at least! Do you want Lord Hollowvale’s daughter to be laughed from his own ballroom? Today’s style is to be clad in forgotten memories!”
• “Wealth does not improve a lady’s virtue, of course,” Lady Mourningwood informed Dora from her other side, as they headed out into the halls of the Hollow House. “But a good chaperone is essential to her reputation. Naturally, I will be your chaperone—and if you look any men in the eyes, I shall be sure to pluck your own eyes from your head in turn.”
• “You mean to say that the entire room is invisible to me?” she asked in puzzlement. “But I shall be running into people by mistake all evening!” <> “A small price to pay in return for propriety, of course,” Lady Mourningwood said with absolute seriousness.
• “Oh!” Lord Blackthorn said. “Well clearly, the creature would have a dolphin’s head. For dolphins must stay in the ocean, and it would need its gills to breathe.” <> “That is a more sensible answer than I was expecting,” Dora admitted to him.
• he said softly. “And I will not let you die. You once told me that your cousin was a warm lantern to you, Dora. I know what you mean by that now. Of all things, you have become my lantern too—and I cannot bring myself to let you go out.”
• Dora blinked back hideous tears. “I am sure that every evil man believes himself to be charitable,” she told him. “In that respect, at least, you are a true Englishman.”