The Hidden Princess (8 page)

“Don’t worry about it, Con. What can he do?”

I wondered if that was just Joe’s way of telling me he didn’t want to know. The headache was getting worse every moment and I leaned back in the seat, resting my head against the window. Why had I even thought that he would in any way understand? How could he? I was obviously just doomed to make a complete idiot of myself every time I saw him. I should have cut my losses and shut up. Suddenly, I just couldn’t shake the need to talk about it. To talk about my sister with someone else who’d actually known her, even though mentioning her name to Joe would always be a mistake.

He fell in love with Lissy
, Rafe had told me.
He took it really hard when she died
.

“It’s Lissy.” I turned my head, pretending not to look at him. The first time I’d spoken her name in six years, and it was like spitting out a stone, cold and alien. “I keep dreaming about Lissy.” I’d done it – I’d finally said her name, and it felt like jumping off a huge rock, tumbling to the sea far below.

Joe flinched – a muscle in his jaw jumped and twitched. “Well, then, you’re a bloody idiot. She’s not coming back, Connie.”

A kind of ragged, burning fury overtook me then. “I didn’t say she was coming back, did I? She’s dead, Joe. I know she’s dead, OK? Forget I ever said anything.”

She’s not coming back?
What a weird thing to say. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that death isn’t the end.

“Maybe just shut up, Connie, and stop going on about what you don’t understand? Lissy died. Deal with it.”

I turned to him, bright hot anger welling up. “Jesus, how dare you? It’s not my fault I’ve been dreaming about her, OK? She was my sister. I just wanted to talk to someone. Forget I even said anything.” There was more I was longing to say but although I could have slapped him, I needed Joe onside. The last thing I wanted was for Mum to come running back to Hopesay early only to find I’d planned a mini festival in her absence. I turned my pounding head to one side so I was looking out of the window instead of at Joe, at his hand on the gearstick, the way he hadn’t shaved for a few days, the distracting smell of washing powder and that other indefinable faint scent, diesel and something else I couldn’t place. Infuriating.

Please. You’ve got to help me. Move the crosses, Connie
—

The Voice. Again.

I shivered, tearing my gaze away from the hedgerows flashing past the van window to glance back at Joe, who was still staring at the road ahead like nothing had happened. He hadn’t heard.
I was the only one
. OK, so Mum had always told me that if we got rid of the iron crucifixes from the Reach, no one from the village would ever set foot in the house again – but all that stuff was just a load of stupid old fairy stories. None of those old stories were really true. How could they be?

I had to let go of Lissy.
She’s not coming back
. Obsessing over her was really starting to mess with my head. I’d hallucinated in a maths class, now I was hearing a voice from my dreams in broad daylight. What if I was seriously, genuinely ill just like everyone used to think? Like, mentally ill?

All right
,
there’s one way to prove whether all this is just your mind playing tricks on you, Connie Harker. Only one way to prove whether or not you’ve lost your grip on reality
.

All I needed to do was wait till we got home, which wouldn’t take long judging by the way my disconcertingly attractive stepbrother was driving. Wait till we got home and move the first crucifix I could lay my hands on. What harm could it do, really? Of course nothing would happen, but at least then I’d know if I was sick in the head. Maybe it was time to get some help. And every time I closed my eyes, I saw the boy’s face: his hair blacker than coal, the cloak of white feathers and his smile – his beautiful secret smile, just for me.

I couldn’t deny that a part of me wanted him to be real.

It is black in the lost tunnels of the Hidden – just deep and endless black, dark nothing. Iris knows her way without light, and I have no argument with that – the less likely we are to be spotted by anyone else, the better. Treason. We’re planning treason.
Murder
. The air here is moist and rank – centuries of damp leaching out of ancient bedrock. Wet gravelly soil scrunches unpleasantly beneath my bare feet. I sense Iris’s presence just ahead of me – the darkness is without end down here, but I can hear the gentle rhythm of her breathing, her footfalls just a few paces ahead of mine. I can’t help listening out, just waiting to be caught.

At last, Iris stops. “Just here. Wait.”

Relief washes over me, rapidly replaced by fear. There’s no sickly sweet smell of decomposition. I’d feared something rotten, but that’s obviously all over now. But what if it’s Dad? Rafe? Or even Joe? What if one of them did try to follow me after all? Judging by the way Connie has aged I must have been down here for almost six years. Long enough for a corpse to become nothing but bones.

“We need to see,” I whisper, urgent and panicking, and I blow on my palm till the warmth of my breath coalesces into a globe of silver light.

“I can’t go any closer.” Iris gasps, as if she’s trying not to be sick. She flattens herself against the nearest wall, holding one hand up to cover her mouth. “Can’t you smell it, Lissy? The iron?”

What has my life become? A prisoner scurrying around in the dark, my only friend a Hidden girl with a broken mind; the pair of us planning a murder? My heart races and I squat down, my gown trailing in the damp, sticking to my legs. Shadows leap, but the skeleton is easy enough to see – lying face down, one arm reaching out, strands of wiry grey hair still plastered to the skull. Not Rafe then. Or Dad. They were both blond last time I saw them, but perhaps years of wandering alone in the darkness would be enough to strip the colour from anyone’s hair. Tears spring to my eyes, trailing down my face. What must it be like to die down here, so desperate and alone? I know I’ve got to take a closer look, to know for sure who this was. I reach out, reluctantly brushing my fingers against a wizened strip of fabric still stuck to the ribcage. It looks as if it has been nibbled by mice. Or rats. Another wave of cold horror rolls over me. I take the fabric between thumb and forefinger, tugging gently. Silent, it comes away from the bones and I hold it up to the globe of light resting in my other palm.

It’s tweed. Stained green tweed.

I know that jacket. I saw it, years ago, hanging in the boot room at Hopesay Reach. I never met the owner, but I know who he was. Who I hope he was – anyone can take a coat, after all.

“It’s Miles Conway,” I whisper.

Iris draws in a deep, shuddering breath. It’s always horrible to see the effect iron has on the Hidden. How they can’t even bear to be near it.

“Miles,” she whispers. “He’s the one who opened the Gateway last time. Twenty years ago – Rose’s lover, her mortal knight.”

I look down at the stained, rag-draped bones.
Miles
. It really could be him. He must have died searching for Rose. Miles grew up with legends of the Hidden – stories of so much power that he couldn’t resist finding out if they were true. Miles and Rose. Mum and the Swan King. They were both so young. So completely and utterly stupid and naive.
Oh, Mum
. I’m never going to see her again: there’s no breaking a Hidden bargain, and I came to the Halls with my father to save Connie’s life. She’s cursed. If I leave, she’ll die. Even if I wait down here for years and years – the entire length of Connie’s life – by the time I walk out into the daylight again, Connie and most likely everyone else I know will be dead and gone. Mum, Dad, Rafe. Joe. All gone. The world will have moved on without me, and I’ll be a stranger to everybody. Even then, the Swan King will still have my blood – how could I ever be sure he wouldn’t release the plague?

Unless he were dead?

“Maybe Miles came looking for Rose,” I say, quietly. “How awful. And it was all for nothing: he had no chance of finding her.” I’ll never forget the moment Joe killed Rose, flinging that iron knife into her face as she tried to stop us escaping back into the mortal world through the Western Caverns, her cry as she lay dying. We thought we were free. We thought we’d won. We couldn’t have been more wrong. My father always wins. Every time.

“I don’t care, Lissy!” Iris hisses. “Just search him and find the iron –
please
. I can’t stand it for much longer.”

“I don’t think we should be here. What do you want me to do, Iris? Kill my father? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”

Iris stares at me, cowering against the damp earthen tunnel wall, as far away from the stench of iron as she can get. “Please, Lissy.”

Mum
. All this started with her. Had she really loved him, the Swan King? Would she forgive me? I stare at Iris. “Listen. Just say that I did kill the King, that I murdered my own father… Would that mean the bargain was broken? That the curse on my sister would just dissolve into nothing?”

Iris nods, slowly. “In the moment of his death, your sister will be free of the curse. You could leave here and Connie would live. Think about it, Lissy. With the Swan King dead, the rest of us would be free to negotiate with the Fontevrault again.
He’s
the one keeping us down here – it’s their fear he’ll release the plague.”

She’s right. In a twisted way, killing the Swan King really would solve everything. There will be no danger of the plague being released once he’s dead. It’s just that I can’t forget the change in him when I said,
Honour her memory with love
. As if, finally, he might be giving up on the idea of revenge. It would solve everything, but I’d be a murderer. Killing is always wrong, isn’t it?
Taking a life
.

I lean over the skeleton, searching for what’s left of Miles’s other hand. My fingertips brush over damp bone and I can’t stop shivering, but now I’m touching something else – cold, smooth and hard. “It’s some kind of metal tube.” I sit back on my heels, lifting it up. All I can hear is the hollow clatter of tiny radial bones against the raw bedrock and Iris’s rapid, shallow breathing. It’s a rifle. I’m touching the barrel of a gun, and it’s heavy.

“It’s a mortal weapon, isn’t it?” Iris whispers, her voice harsh – so desperate. “Can you use it, Lissy?”

If Miles had a gun, he must also have come with ammunition. The gun’s too heavy for me to hold one-handed. I blow the globe of light away from my fingertips so that it hovers unaided in the air above his bones and take the rifle in both hands, running my fingers down the stained and rusted barrel till I find the safety catch beneath. I squeeze it, holding my breath. It doesn’t move, rusted solid.

“It’s ruined.” And the truth is, I’m relieved. Because in that tiny second before Iris arrived in the White Hall, I’d got through to my father. I know I had. I am so sure of it. I could see the change in his eyes when I spoke of Larkspur’s mother.
Don’t honour her memory with blood. Honour it with love
.

“There must be something you can do with it,” Iris hisses, her voice so brittle and tense I can tell she hasn’t got long. We can’t stay much longer.

I sit back on my heels. “I’m sorry, Iris – but to actually kill one of the Hidden the iron has to enter your bloodstream, doesn’t it? This is a rifle, not a blade. It’s completely ruined – I can’t fire it, even if I could find any bullets.”

Iris lets out a sigh. “I’m afraid, Lissy. So afraid.”

Me too. “We should get back to the White Hall. The last thing we need is for him to suspect us of treason. We’ve been gone long enough. You know how he is – he always notices everything.”

I look up, away from the mortal remains of Miles – I’ve been squatting in the same position for too long, and I reach back to lean on one hand. My palm rests against cold metal, and I freeze.
Iron. More iron
. Miles wasn’t just carrying his rifle but something else, too. I shift my weight and my fingers slowly close around the small, blunt-ended iron shape lying amongst the damp shingle. It’s mine now. Turning, I uncurl my fingers and show Iris the knife, the pitted, corroded blade – just a dull glimmer in my silver light.

“I’m afraid to use it, Iris. It’s wrong. Killing is wrong, no matter what he’s done – what he
wants
to do. What he’s guilty of.”

“I’m afraid, too.” Iris looks up, fixing her gaze on me. “But I’m more afraid about that little mortal girl in the waters of the Gateway. What if he uses her to get out, and the Fontevrault come searching for the Hidden, hunting the Swan King? They’re mortal – the iron magic in the Reach won’t stop them. They could come through the Gateway any time they liked, swarming through the tunnels like rats, stalking down each and every one of us. All your father needs to do is give the Fontevrault a reason to attack, and they will.”

She hasn’t forgotten, then.

“Lissy,” Iris hisses, “if the mortals are meddling with the Gateway again, just as Miles did twenty years ago, then we’re far too close to danger. Far too close. The Hidden long for their freedom but we can’t risk the Gateway being opened whilst your father still lives.” Iris sounds collected and reasonable again – it’s so disconcerting, this constant shift between a girl lost in time, a prisoner of her own terrible memories, and Iris’s real self, the girl she was before my father broke her mind. “Listen – if the Swan King releases his plague, the Fontevrault will show us no mercy. We’ll
all
die.” I hear nothing but the panicked and rag-torn rhythm of her breath. “His time is up, Lissy, and you know it. He must die – with the Swan King gone, you’d be free to open the Gateway at last. You’ll see your mortal family again and the Fontevrault might show mercy to the rest of us if you can persuade them we mean no harm. There’s a chance they might leave us in peace.”

We both stare down at the penknife resting in the palm of my hand, Iris recoiling a little. She’s right. I have to kill him. I have to be a murderer. Connie won’t have a clue. In her eyes, the Swan King is only a wild and beautiful young man, with an otherworldly air that will make her skin crawl, and yet she still won’t be able to resist him. She won’t be the first mortal to fall for one of the Hidden. I feel so helpless, torn between committing murder or waiting for disaster.