An Archive of Romance

An Archive of Romance is a companion novel to Ava Reid's A Study in Drowning, continuing the story of that book's protagonists, Effy Sayre and Preston Héloury. The first two parts consist entirely of archival documents: diary entries, letters, newspaper clippings, academic papers, and literary excerpts. The third part shifts to conventional prose narration set approximately one year later.

The story is set in Llyr, a fictional kingdom whose literary tradition centers on "Sleepers," revered cultural icons whose bodies are interred in a national museum believed to confer magical blessings upon the nation. Llyr is engaged in a prolonged war with Argant. At the heart of the narrative lies Angharad, a celebrated novel attributed to Emrys Myrddin, Llyr's recently deceased national author. The novel tells the story of its protagonist and narrator, Angharad, a young woman held captive by the Fairy King, a sinister immortal being. Excerpts throughout the archive depict Angharad's captivity and resistance. The Fairy King tells her he will love her "to ruination," and when she asks, "Yours or mine?" he does not answer.

Following Myrddin's death, his son, Ianto Myrddin, solicits designs for Hiraeth Manor, a structure in the author's hometown of Saltney to house his family and literary archive. Effy, a first-year architecture student at the University of Llyr in the city of Caer-Isel, wins the commission and travels to Saltney, though her notes reveal deep uncertainty about the project.

At Hiraeth, Effy encounters Preston, an Argantian literature student and protégé of Dr. Cedric Gosse, a prominent Myrddin scholar. Preston is secretly building a thesis arguing that Myrddin is a fraud. His journal entries describe Effy as "infuriatingly passionate and startlingly sharp-tongued," and despite resolving to keep his distance, he writes her name repeatedly, unable to stop thinking about her. He bandages her knee after she jumps from a moving car to escape Ianto, whose lurking presence unsettles them both. In his journal, Preston compares Effy to the Argantian myth of Ker-Is, a sunken city where "fire burns green," and concludes, "That's what she reminds me of. A fairy tale."

Effy discovers Preston's secret thesis and confronts him. They form an uneasy alliance, with Preston admitting she understands something essential about Angharad that eludes even him. Together, they secure an invitation to the estate of Colin Blackmar, Myrddin's friend and collaborator, where they hope to find evidence.

Archival documents reveal the conspiracy behind Myrddin's authorship. His diary entries describe meeting Blackmar's eldest daughter, who is "very fair" and has written poems of her own. A later entry records that Blackmar "delivered Angharad to me in the dead of night." Letters signed "E.M." to an unnamed woman, later identified as Angharad Blackmar, reveal a secret romantic relationship. In one letter, Myrddin recounts her saying, "I will love you to ruination," confirming that the novel's language originates from Angharad Blackmar's own life. Preston's journal charts his escalating feelings for Effy alongside his fear of Ianto, who confronts Preston late at night, declaring it is "in a man's nature, to want to possess beautiful things."

In the novel-within-the-novel, Angharad's resistance builds. She befriends Arethusa, the Fairy King's other captive, and they attempt to escape together, but Arethusa cannot leave: as a creature of salt and foam, she cannot exist in the mortal world. She tells Angharad to go without her and dissipates. Angharad destroys the Fairy King, mourning both him and her lost girlhood but drawing her "first true breath in decades." In the final scene, she wades into the sea and laughs: "Before the ocean is friend or foe, it simply is. And so are you."

Part Two opens with public fallout. A Llyrian Times article reports that two undergraduates have produced documents proving Angharad's authorship is a fabrication. Colin Blackmar calls the documents forgeries. Kitteridge Marlowe of Greenebough Publishing dismisses the students: "One of them is a woman, for Saints' sake, and the other is an Argantian." The Ministry of Defense worries the controversy will damage army morale. A separate letter confirms Effy's admission to the literature college, the first woman to receive this distinction.

Effy's coursework introduces Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale, another Sleeper, whose celebrated poem "The Garden in Stone" depicts a maiden sleeping in a frozen garden of glass. A biography reveals that Ardor, blind in his final years, employed his daughter, Antonia, as his amanuensis, the person who transcribed his words. Antonia's diary entries reveal a rich inner life constrained by isolation. She writes of helping create a great work of art, hoping it might reach "one girl, who finds herself in the same garden as I am, in white flowers, in a coffin of glass." Her suitors dismissed by her possessive father, Antonia never married and died a decade after her mother. Effy writes that Antonia's letters resonate deeply, comparing the experience to reading Angharad: "The words make her real."

As the war intensifies, the Sleeper Museum is mysteriously destroyed, crumbling into the waters of Lake Bala. Llyr's offensive falters, and following a crushing defeat at the Battle of Four Crosses, a peace treaty ends the war. The Antonia Ardor Memorial Endowment is established at the University of Llyr for the study of female authors, and Effy and Preston's thesis, "Uncovering Angharad," is published, establishing that Angharad Myrddin wrote the novel attributed to her husband.

Part Three shifts to prose narration. Effy, now a second-year literature student, works on a paper about Corentin and the Knight of the Greene, a chivalric romance by the Sleeper Perceval ab-Owain. In a subversion of convention, the knight's beloved, Florimell, escapes her fairy captor and saves Corentin. Dress shopping with her best friend, Rhia, Effy is overwhelmed by the ordinariness of finding a gown that fits. She tells Rhia, "I never thought I would survive this long," and reflects that she is now brave enough to want the ordinary. Preston, now a doctoral student, reflects on their thesis's impact but cannot write his wedding vows.

In their shared flat, Effy and Preston discuss the wedding. Preston's mother and brother will attend, but Effy has not invited her own family, recalling her mother's hurtful words and the dutiful care without love from her grandparents. Effy mentors Maeve Guilford, the inaugural recipient of the Angharad scholarship and the second woman admitted to the literature college, determined that Maeve will not endure the same experiences she did.

Preston walks to the pier on Lake Bala, where the Sleeper Museum once stood and where he proposed to Effy. Inspiration for his vows strikes suddenly: "The words had been there all along." On the wedding day, Rhia styles Effy's hair with winter camellias, and Angharad Myrddin, the woman now recognized as the novel's true author, pins the Héloury family's white fur stole, a six-generation Argantian heirloom, over Effy's shoulders. Effy regards herself in the mirror and thinks, "I'm ready."

The ceremony takes place at the Chapel of Saint Florimell. The pews hold only their closest friends and family. The seat where Preston's late father would have sat is empty; Preston looks through the stained-glass window and silently says, in Argantian, "I love you." Following Argantian tradition, Preston closes his eyes as Effy approaches the altar arm-in-arm with Angharad. He opens them when Effy says, "I'm here." Preston gives her a handmade album containing the archive of their relationship: journal entries, sketches, and thesis drafts. Effy reads his early entries aloud and realizes he loved her from the beginning.

Their vows are presented in full. Effy describes her journey from fear to love, calling Preston her safety, her comfort, and her home. Preston recounts lying beside Effy at Penrhos, when his scholarly skepticism fell silent and he simply knew he should be with her, a certainty "as unimpeachable as any proven law of nature." The novel closes with Preston folding back Effy's veil as white flowers strain toward the light, snow falls against the stained-glass windows, and "outside, the world was bright and new."