The Hidden Princess (10 page)

And in a rush, those words come back to me:
Don’t honour her memory with blood. Honour it with love
. I was so sure he was on the brink of change, giving up the idea of revenge. Isn’t there just a chance – a tiny chance – that my father and I might step into the dark waters of the Gateway side by side, that we might be free together and with no blood spilt; his long dreams of plague and death and revenge all over, all gone?

Honour her memory with love
.

I kneel at his side and he still doesn’t look at me. Iris is right. Even if my father has given up on the idea of revenge, the Fontevrault would never believe it. In their eyes, he’ll always be a danger. I’m holding the knife and he knows I have it. Of course he does. He looks up at last and glancing down at the knife in my hand, he gives me a faint smile, completely unafraid. A cool trickle of fear slides down my back. What does this mean? God only knows how much self-control it must take for him not to recoil from the scent of the iron as Iris and the guards did.

I lay the blade between us on the quartz floor of the cavern, saying nothing. It’s always so bright in here compared with the rest of the Halls; the light hurts my eyes, glancing off the silver steel, the incongruous blue plastic handle. My father looks down at it, smiling, then at me.

“I don’t want to use it.” My stomach churns. “Truly, I don’t.”

“Really?” He looks at me with such yearning.

“You’ve seen Connie – my sister. I know you have.”

He never takes his eyes away from mine, like he’s absorbing every last detail of my face. “What did you expect, Lissy – that your family would just let you go? She is your sister. Your blood kin. You are bound to one another. Of course she came looking for you, whether she meant to or not, even if it was only in her dreams. And Connie’s dreams are not those of other mortals. She
travels
, Lissy. She’s not an ordinary mortal girl.”

Oh, God. What’s
happened
to her?

It’s what he has been waiting for all this time. I might have refused to open the Gateway, but I could do nothing about this.
Oh, Connie
. The knife waits on the ground between us. Beyond the White Hall, I hear Iris’s voice rising with panic – more Hidden voices raised in anger. A scream – a struggle? Are the guards actually keeping the rest of the Hidden out, those willing to fight for their king? The air in the Halls of the Hidden is thick with betrayal on this day, but how deep does the treason run?

My father seems to pay no attention to the noise outside. “It’s all right, Lissy,” he says. “I know. My time as King of the Hidden has slipped away like so many grains of sand. The Fontevrault know too well that I would do anything to annihilate the mortal race; I’ve done nothing but ensure the imprisonment of my people.” He smiles at the gathering voices outside the White Hall, voices raised in anger, in victory. “But more to the point, Lissy, it seems that the Hidden do not share my desire for revenge. It seems that the Hidden cannot wait for ever to be free.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” I say.

It’s as if he hasn’t even heard me. “I couldn’t help it, daughter,” he whispers. “I just missed her so much, and I was so, so angry.”

Tears slide down my face. “Don’t—”

“Lissy.” He smiles at me. “Look.”

As one, we both turn to the Gateway, and as I watch a change moves across the face of the black and glittering waters. The darkness fades to grey then deep, endless blue trailed with drifts of cloud. It’s the sky. We’re actually looking at the sky above the Reach. Now I see more detail – the shadow of a tree, leaves shifting in a wind I can’t feel down here. It’s the way out, and it’s open.

Freedom. It’s the sky. I never thought I’d see the sky again.

“You did it. You persuaded Connie to open the Gateway.” I speak in a dry whisper, throat desiccated with fear.

“She’s so lovely,” he says, simply. “So like your mother. Golden and warm – so very warm. I would give a lot just to hold one more mortal girl in my arms, Lissy.”

“Not that one.” I won’t let him touch her. Won’t let him near her. My eyes travel back to the Gateway – it’s a window now, just for the Hidden. They are free at last, the iron magic dissolved once more. A window to a lost world. The sky is so blue that it hurts my eyes: it’s hard to absorb all that colour after so many endless years down here in the darkness of the Halls. My father smiles, and as one, we both turn away from the Gateway, from the brightness of the sky, and we look up at the crystalline quartz wall above it all. The silver vial still sits untouched, resting on a thin ledge far above my head. My blood. If he’d really wanted to release the plague, he would have done it by now.

Surely?

“Do you know the mortals say we have no souls?” my father asks, gently. “We may not share the agony of their short lives, but once dead, the Hidden are truly gone, snuffed out like candle flames.”

“No one really knows what happens when we die, mortal or not.” My voice is shaking. “No one has ever returned to tell us.”

He smiles. “Do you think, then, that there is a chance I might see her again? My own love?”

I can’t answer that, but his desperation chills me. “We could walk out of here together, you and I. We could negotiate with the Fontevrault and be free.”

“Lissy, my dear child, if you learn one thing from me, it must be never to negotiate with the Fontevrault. If I hadn’t done that, Larkspur’s mother would still be at my side, and they would not have cut her throat with an iron knife in the forest beyond Fontevrault Abbey.” He smiles once more, desolate. “My time is over, daughter. Listen to them calling for my blood. The Hidden want their freedom, and all I want is darkness if I cannot have her. Only you can grant their freedom, Lissy. Only you.”

“No—” I hiss.
What is he asking me to do?

“What I would really like,” my father whispers, “is to see Larkspur one last time. If I called them now, Lissy, will they come, do you think?” His voice breaks a little on those last few words.

Them?
What does he mean by that? He’s confused, making mistakes.

“You know that Larkspur will come. But it doesn’t have to be for one last time.”

He hasn’t taken my blood, not yet, but the sky is so blue, so open and so free. Is he actually inviting me to take his life – begging me to, even? And yet the Swan King has outwitted me before. In the end he always wins. Doesn’t he? I look up into his face, and all I see in his eyes is grief, endless grief and a desperate longing that can never be salved. But with my father, there’s always a catch. Always. I watch my hand move; I snatch the knife so fast, but he could still stop me if he chose. He can move quicker than I can. But he doesn’t. We’re so close, kneeling within arm’s reach of one another.

“You too?” he says, his voice so soft and gentle. “You would betray me? Really, Lissy?”

“You asked me to do it.”

The Gateway is open. He’s tricked me before. I can’t take the risk. My hand flies out, fisted around the plastic handle of the knife. He doesn’t move; he only waits. I stop, fist poised in mid-air. I let the knife fall into my lap, useless.

“I can’t do it.” I sound so
normal
.

And then my father says, “
Please
.”

I stare at him.
What?

“
The guards let you in
, Lissy. It is done. Please.”

He’s been betrayed so many times. He’s alone. I’m all he has.

And I can’t trust him.

My hand rises. The plastic knife handle is slippery, the palm of my hand folded around it, fingers gripping, slipping. The blade is small and pitted with corrosion. It’s nothing but a cheap penknife, and it’s just me and him. We sit so close our knees are almost touching, the feathers of his cloak falling into my lap as if an enormous pillow has burst between us; the most beautiful and lonely and desperate and evil creature I have ever known. My father. He wanted me so much that he changed the world to get me.

And I cut him. I reach out and I cut him. I draw a thin blue line of blood down the side of my father’s face with the very sharpest tip of the penknife, and all the time he does nothing but watch me. He doesn’t so much as flinch, even though the pain and horror of the iron must be worse than anything I can imagine.

“I’m sorry—” The words fly out in a whisper, a gasp.

All I hear is the softest exhalation. “
Ah
—” And in his eyes I see the real truth. He would not have released the plague. I could have granted my father his freedom, only he no longer wanted it. I reach out and take his hands in mine.

“I can’t see her,” he whispers. “I still can’t see her. Oh, is that you, my own love? Please let it be you.” He reaches out for me, my father, and I hold on to him. In the moment of his dying, has he mistaken me for Larkspur’s mother? Or does he see something that I can’t, that I’ll never see because I can’t die?

“It’s me,” I whisper, anything to bring him comfort, cradling his dark head against my shoulder, and my father sobs with relief. In the moment of his death he is warm to the touch just like any beautiful mortal boy, only now I’m holding on to nothing, just nothing, and all I can see are white feathers, spinning furiously in the air, filling the White Hall, catching in my hair, drifting into my mouth, blinding me, and all I hear is the ragged sound of my own sobbing, because in the end nothing could save him. I killed him. I killed my father, the last to betray him. He’s gone. The Swan King is dead.

The feathers fall so silently and when they hit the quartz floor they become as nothing, just nothing. All is quiet, and when at last I look up, half blind with tears, I see the Hidden gathering, filing into the White Hall in complete silence, watching me and waiting, so beautiful in their ragged clothes. Iris leads them. It’s she who speaks, she with the crown of ivy in her hair, and I wonder if she was chosen in secret by the rest of the Hidden to engineer this, to steer me along the path I’ve taken, knowing that Iris was the only one I trusted, because she was the only one in the Halls who had tried to help Tippy. How deep did the betrayal of my father truly run?

I’m a murderer. I killed him. For all the dreadful things he did, he was my father, and he was desperate, alone till the last.

“Hail the Hawk Queen,” Iris says, so gently, so sweet, and there’s a light in her eyes I’ve never seen before. She’s so close to what she wants. What she so urgently needs. A baby, a child to hold in her arms at last. What have I done?

I stand: I turn to face them. “You’re free, but I can’t be your queen. The throne is Larkspur’s right, not mine. And now at last he can return to us.” It’s a struggle to keep my voice steady. I’m a murderer. I killed my own father.

They all wait, still silent, for
Iris
to speak. How long has this been planned? Did they all betray him? Every last one of the Hidden?

Iris smiles. “But Lissy, Larkspur is not here. Larkspur is not the one who killed his father.”

“What do you mean?” I hear blood pounding in my ears. I want to go home. The Hidden can’t stop me going home now. I stand up, ready to step into the waters of the Gateway, to walk out onto the lawn at Hopesay Reach. Will Mum be there? Rafe? Connie?

Mum. I thought I’d never see her again
—

“Larkspur was born a misfit,” Iris goes on. “He was born with too much mercy, Lissy. It’s why he betrayed your father. It’s why he took you home to your mother when you were a baby, and why he was exiled. It’s why he didn’t allow your little sister to die of the Hidden sickness Rose touched her with. He should have let her die, Lissy, shouldn’t he? But he couldn’t. Do you really think we would choose a creature of Larkspur’s stamp to be our king? Even his own father knew he could never rule.”

I stare at her, horrified. She had me fooled so easily: she wasn’t acting alone. She never had been.

I step closer to the water, and when I speak my voice shakes with rage and shock. “Well, choose a new ruler from your own number, then, Iris, because I never swore to be your queen. I’m going home. I’ve waited long enough to see my family again.”

The Hidden watch without a single word. I can feel their eyes on me, though. All watching, all waiting as one by one the drift of white feathers surrounding me fades into nothing. There is now nothing left of my father at all, and a burning sensation spreads across my back and between my shoulders as the last of those white feathers fades into nothing and disappears. It’s as if I’m shape-changing into my hawk-form without actually intending to, with no control over it at all.

Stop!
I scream at myself, but the burning across my shoulders only gets worse and all I can see is the Hidden watching me, so calm and impassive, and Iris standing before all of them, like this is what she has been waiting for all along.

“You have no choice, Lissy,” she says, smiling gently. “You took the king’s life. You are now the Hawk Queen whether you choose it or not.”

And the burning spreads over my entire body, only I’m not shape-changing, I’m screaming. I can’t stop screaming because this is something different, something new. And I see feathers whirling again in the White Hall, but this time they are not the snow-pale of a swan, but honey-golden and tawny-brown. They are the feathers of a hawk, and the White Hall is full of my screaming, because I see what Iris was planning, what she and the rest of the Hidden wanted all along. Agony tears through my body, and I rise to my feet, facing her. Iris wanted a Hawk Queen to lead her out beneath the mortal sky so she could bear another hybrid baby, one that might live this time, and the Hidden want to leave the Halls for ever. They chose her to lead their deception, knowing she was the only one of their number I even half trusted, all because she was the only one, apart from Larkspur himself, who tried to save poor Tippy, the only one of the Hidden who tried to release a poor, lonely mortal child from the Halls— A dense weight gathers at my shoulders, soft warmth encompassing my bare arms, the cool weight of a silver clasp at my throat.

Iris tricked me – they all did. This is what they wanted. I’m nothing but the key to their freedom. I look down and wish I had not, because all I see is golden-brown feathers. I am now wrapped in a cloak all my own: I am the Hawk Queen. I’m what the Hidden wanted. Horror boils up inside me – Iris used me, she tricked me and now I’ve changed, I’ve become
something else
— The pain recedes and I can speak again. The Gateway is open before me with the wide-open sky just a step away, and Hawk Queen or not, I’m going home.