by C. S. Pacat
‘What happened to it?’ she said.
It felt important. As if what Will could tell her was more important than anything else. As if she had to know it.
‘A long time ago,’ said Will, ‘there was a Dark King. He was powerful and merciless, and he liked to control people. He wanted to rule the world. He almost did. He was only stopped at great cost, after he caused destruction and death.’
It felt true. With the flame light flickering in this cold ruin of a castle, it all felt true. A Dark King, rising up out of a past that seemed real as soon as Will spoke of it. But it was as if there was a piece missing, something right on the tip of her tongue—
‘Stopped,’ she said. ‘By who?’
‘A Lady,’ said Will, and suddenly she was caught in his gaze, unable to look away from him, magnetised. She remembered the flare of light in her garden. She felt like she was on the edge of understanding, even as something in Will’s eyes now flashed painfully. ‘They loved each other. Maybe that’s how she killed him. But even then, it wasn’t finished. The Dark King swore to return.’
‘Return … from death?’ said Katherine.
‘The Lady couldn’t return as he could, so she had a child, hoping that if the Dark King rose again, her descendant would take up the fight.’
You. She felt the word, like a throb, as she looked into Will’s eyes. You, you, you. And there was something about him, something that felt ancient and part of this, like he was the key, like he was terribly important, if only she could grasp the edge of it—
‘Simon’s killing the Lady’s descendants,’ said Will. ‘He thinks it will return the Dark King.’
A Dark King who was merciless. A Dark King who wanted to rule. A Dark King who could destroy the world …
Katherine shivered in her wet clothes. Even by the fire, she couldn’t seem to get warm.
‘And will it?’ said Katherine.
Will didn’t answer right away. He glanced across at Violet, and the two seemed to share something before he looked back at her.
‘He killed my aunt before I was born,’ said Will. ‘I think she was the first. When the Dark King didn’t appear after he did that—’
‘He had to kill all of them,’ said Violet. ‘Anyone who might have the blood.’
‘It’s why he killed your mother. It’s why he’s chasing you,’ said Cyprian. ‘“Killing one isn’t enough. It has to be all of them.”’
Lord Crenshaw’s conversational voice saying, I needed to kill all of them. And I have. They’re all dead. All but one.
She looked at Will, the flames from the fire lighting his face.
You. It made sense of his strangeness, the otherworldly quality that he had, the way he’d always seemed – sharper and brighter in her mind than other people, even as he’d seemed separate and apart.
Will was the one Lord Crenshaw was chasing. The one he needed to kill to succeed in his plans.
‘The Shadow Kings can’t be stopped,’ said Cyprian. ‘If he sends them after you—’
‘He hasn’t released them yet,’ said Will. ‘He needs the Blood of the Lady to release them from the Stone.’
‘Your blood,’ said Violet to Will, and Katherine felt her skin prickle.
‘And once he has it?’ said Cyprian.
Will said, ‘He’ll release the Shadow Kings, slaughter his enemies, and end the Lady’s line.’
‘And He will rise,’ said Cyprian, as cold ran down Katherine’s spine.
She saw the look Will exchanged with Cyprian and Violet, right before the three of them left the gatekeep together. She waited just long enough after they had gone, then rose from the fireside stool, telling the two girls, Grace and Sarah, ‘I need some air.’
And just as she had followed Lord Crenshaw, she slipped out after Will and his friends, wanting to know what they were saying when they thought she couldn’t hear.
She saw Will in the courtyard not far from the gatekeep, speaking to Cyprian and Violet in a low-voiced, tight cluster. She pressed herself behind a jut of wall, out of sight but within earshot.
‘He needs you,’ Cyprian was saying to Will. ‘But he won’t get you.’
‘We know how to stop him now,’ said Violet. ‘Katherine said it. He needs your blood. Without it, he can’t release the Shadow Kings. All we have to do is keep you away from him.’
‘You mean run,’ said Will.
She had never heard him sound like that before. She couldn’t see the expression on his face but desperately wanted to. She pressed herself more closely against the wall, hoping not to be seen.
‘The Hall can keep us safe—’ Cyprian began, but Violet cut him off.
‘Simon knows we’re here,’ said Violet. ‘We don’t have supplies to last for more than a month. It’s too easy for him to stake us out. We can’t stay in the Hall.’
Will was silent.
‘Simon’s not unbeatable.’ Violet pressed her point. ‘Your mother evaded him for years until he found her. Gauthier stayed ahead of him his whole life. If we stay on the move, we can keep you away from him.’
It was Cyprian who broke the long, difficult pause. ‘She’s right. We run. We leave England and we get as far away as possible.’
‘We?’ said Will.
‘That’s right,’ said Cyprian.
‘The Hall’s your home,’ said Will.
‘I didn’t swear my oath to the Hall,’ said Cyprian. ‘I swore it to the people of this world. To remember and protect. That’s what I trained to do.’
There was another long pause.
Then Will’s voice, grimly. ‘All right. Get your things together. We leave at dawn. We travel light and we stay on the move.’
‘I’ll tell the others,’ said Violet.
What about me? thought Katherine. And my sister? Where do we go? Are you just going to leave us? What do we do?
But just as Katherine was about to hurry back to make sure she wasn’t seen, she heard Will speak Violet’s name, holding her back.
‘What is it?’ Violet said.
‘The sisters.’ Katherine stayed very still, fixed in place and straining to hear.
‘What about them?’
‘I want you to give me your word you’ll protect them,’ said Will as Katherine’s heart beat oddly. ‘You’re the strongest one here. I want you to keep them safe.’
‘I might not like her fiancé,’ said Violet slowly. ‘But that girl risked a lot to come here. For you.’
For you. Katherine flushed, the heat scalding her cold cheeks, feeling painfully exposed.
‘Thank you, Violet,’ said Will. ‘I couldn’t do this without you.’
‘But where do I sleep?’ said Katherine, looking at the small room with its five pallets on the floor.
‘This is it,’ said Violet, shoving a roll of blankets into Katherine’s hands.
Will had told her as soon as he returned to the gatekeep what he and his friends planned to do. He’d told her it would be dangerous. He’d told her his friends would help her whatever she decided. And she’d said yes when he’d asked her if she wanted to come with them.
‘You can have my bed,’ said Will, pointing to one of the meagre pallet beds in the corner. Will was going to sleep on the cold stone floor. ‘I know it’s not much. We’ll find better lodgings for you when we’re far enough away, on the road.’
She saw in her mind’s eye her own bed’s soft downy coverings and silver bed warmer. ‘Thank you. I’m very grateful. Elizabeth, let’s settle in here.’
There was nowhere to wash or undress, so she asked the two janissaries to hold up a blanket while she stood behind it and Elizabeth helped unlace her corset. She went to bed in her underdress and shawl. Cyprian and Will had gone downstairs and only came back when it was dark and she was under the blankets. She tried not to think about the morning.
She thought Will would go immediately to sleep like Cyprian, but instead he came to sit beside her pallet. She flushed, warming at his presence, at the thought tha
t he wanted to see her before bed.
‘I came to say goodnight,’ he said softly.
There was something wrong. She could see it in him. She was the one who clasped his hand and stopped him from standing up. She looked up into his eyes. ‘What is it?’
She didn’t think he was going to answer. The others were already asleep or too far away to hear. The silence seemed to stretch out for a long time.
He spoke the words quietly. ‘My mother spent her whole life running.’ He rubbed his thumb along the silver scar on his hand. Simon killed my mother, he’d said to her, that night in her garden. She’d thought Will a dashing young man of means, until that moment, when the ground had felt like it was scrolling out from under her feet.
‘I wish you could have known her,’ he said. ‘She was a good person, brave, strong. Sometimes she could seem harsh or distracted, but everything she did – she had a reason. She sacrificed a lot for her child.’
It was easier to speak in the dark, words that might not have found their way out in daylight. He’d given her something true, she could feel it. She owed him something true in return, words that could only be spoken in the dark.
‘I thought there was a life that I wanted,’ she heard herself saying. ‘It was jewels, and gowns, and pretty fashionable things. Lord Crenshaw would have given me that. But I couldn’t be with him. Not once I knew what he was.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Will, with a strange half smile. ‘Once you knew what he was – what he really was – you couldn’t bear it.’
He said it as though he believed in her. As though he had always known that she would do the right thing. But she hadn’t, not at first. She had run from the truth he had told her right back to her world of safety and ease. There was something else she owed him, words that were harder to say since the night she had forced him out of her garden.
‘You were right about him,’ she said. ‘What you told me that night.’ She drew in a breath. ‘All of it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Will said. ‘If it weren’t for me, you’d still have that life.’
‘I wouldn’t want it,’ she said. ‘Not knowing it wasn’t real.’
She looked around at the dark, bare gatekeep room, which didn’t have wallpaper or carpets or a lady’s maid to help her with her hair. The seven of them were sleeping like paupers in a workhouse. It was frightening and uncomfortable, but it felt like the truth. She looked back at Will’s dark eyes.
‘What’s going to happen tomorrow?’
‘You’ll be safe,’ said Will, and then with that strange, painful smile, ‘I promise.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
WILL WAITED UNTIL Katherine was asleep and the room was dark and still. Then he rose and quietly made his way out of the gatekeep and down towards the stables.
The words rang in his ears. Simon is killing the Lady’s descendants. He thinks it will return the Dark King. Simon had killed his aunt. Simon had killed his mother. Simon had killed who knew how many women, in his desire to bring back the Dark King.
Killing one wasn’t enough. It had to be all of them.
A sick logic that had caused Simon to slaughter women over decades: the idea that her death would bring him back. And now Simon had what he needed: the Shadow Stone. If Simon released the Shadow Kings from their prison, they would kill, a destructive force that no door or wall could keep out. Harbingers of the Dark King’s return, the Shadow Kings would hunt down and obliterate every enemy of their master.
In hushed tones, Cyprian and Violet had talked about how to run, where to go. They thought Simon needing the Lady’s blood gave them a chance. They thought that if they just kept Will safe, they could stop Simon from releasing the Shadow Kings from the Stone.
They were wrong.
Because if Simon needed blood, there was another place that he could get it. And Will knew where. He knew exactly where Simon would go to release the Shadow Kings from centuries locked in their prison.
On the blood-soaked ground where she had looked up at him, fingers still clutching his sleeve.
Bowhill.
It had a terrible rightness to it, the place where everything started. Of course he would have to go back there – back to the beginning of all of it. He had spent all this time running, but deep down he had always known that he would have to return and face the truth.
Simon was going to stand on ground soaked in his mother’s blood and release the Shadow Kings. And they would rain down death and destruction, and through them Simon would end the line of the Lady. That was Simon’s life’s work, the reason he had slaughtered all those women, the reason he had slaughtered the Stewards. He was going to return the Dark King and bring the terrors of the past into their present.
Will knew what he had to do. Who he had to be. The knowledge had grown in him since he had stood in front of the dead Tree Stone and the Elder Steward had told him about his mother. Or, no, maybe he’d known since his mother had died and he’d stumbled away with a bleeding hand and bruises around his throat.
The Lady is meant to kill the Dark King.
He had run from it at first, not wanting it to be true. But there was no escaping it.
You could run from your enemies.
You couldn’t run from yourself.
He took a bridle from the tack room and made his way to the quiet horse stalls. The scene of so much recent death, the outbuildings were eerie at night, cast in shadows and moonlight. He moved quickly, keeping silent so as not to alert the others in the gatekeep. Urgency beat in his blood even as his every move was careful. Simon would have left London this afternoon, after receiving his message at Katherine’s house. He would already be well on his way to Bowhill. Even with the swiftness of a horse sustained by the magics of the Hall, Will didn’t have much time. He stepped into the stables, where the handful of remaining horses were stalled.
‘You’re sneaking out,’ said Elizabeth.
She was like a small ambush, standing right in his way. Her frown was two aggressive eyebrows pointed downward, and her legs were planted, unbudgeable. Will felt a burst of both ridiculousness and frustration, to be stymied like this, right on the threshold, and by this girl, of all people.
‘I’m going for a ride.’
With the bridle in his hand, he could hardly deny it.
‘You just came back from a ride,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You’re sneaking out. I knew if I stayed up I’d catch you.’ The light in her eyes was triumphal.
‘I’m not sneaking out,’ said Will.
‘You’re a sneak,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You lie to people. You told my sister that you met her on Oxford Street by accident. But I asked Violet what you were doing in London that day, and she said you were waiting in Southwark. That’s nowhere near Oxford Street.’ Elizabeth had the savage jubilance of the successful sleuth. ‘You came after my sister on purpose.’
Will felt silly as he kept his voice reasonable and steady. ‘I was chased from Southwark to Oxford Street.’
‘You’re lying. You’re lying to me. You’re lying to everyone. And tonight – you’re planning something. What?’
He thought about what he was riding towards. He had to get to Simon in time. Every moment that he spent here was delaying him further.
Logic wasn’t going to work, and nor was charm, and nor was reason. Very well.
‘Listen, you,’ he said. ‘Step out of my way, or before your sister has a chance to go home, I’ll tell all of London that she ran away unchaperoned.’ He saw her react to that, a sort of shocked hit. Her mouth dropped open, a child’s indignant betrayal at an unfair line of attack.
‘That – isn’t—’ She dug her heels in. ‘She didn’t run away for a man. She ran away because she learned Simon’s plans.’
‘I could tell Simon that instead, if you like,’ said Will steadily. ‘He’ll kill her.’
This drained the blood from her face. ‘He wouldn’t!’
‘He would. That’s why she ran. Now step back and let me through.’
He looked down at her pale, drawn face, expecting to be on his way now that this business was done. She stared up at him, obviously searching for a way around his ultimatum, her young mind working furiously.
‘I want to come with you.’
Christ. ‘You can’t and you won’t.’
‘I want to come with you. If you’re just going for a ride, you won’t mind company. I can take Nell.’
She lifted her chin. He opened his mouth to answer, found no words coming out, and saw the victorious flash in her eyes. He made himself breathe calmly.
‘I’m not just going for a ride—’
(‘I knew it!’)
‘—but what I’m doing doesn’t concern you. You’re going back to the gatekeep. And you’re not going to say a word about this to anyone.’
‘Or you’ll spoil my sister’s reputation.’
‘That’s right,’ said Will. ‘So if you want to save her, you’ll go write to your aunt and uncle and tell them that you and Katherine have ridden to stay with a female friend. They should tell everyone she’s sick, until she returns, which will be shortly. By then I’ll be gone.’
‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ said Elizabeth.
Her eyes glared at him, and he’d half braced himself for a new argument, but instead her mouth twisted and her small hands became fists.
‘All right,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But I’ll remember this. You might have fooled the others. You haven’t fooled me. I’ll find you out. Whatever it is you’re doing.’
It was almost sunset when he saw the first of the rising hills, the unsafe open hills topped with strange rocks. The landscape was like a blast of memory, the boggy, peaty smell of the earth and the difficulty of escape because the terrain was so open. Valdithar had covered in a night and a day what might have taken five times as long on a normal horse, and he was here almost before he was ready. Moving forward felt like forcing himself into a remembered nightmare, the desperation of that night, his stumbling steps and heaving breath, the fear as he pushed himself across stretches of open hillside.
There was a point at which he had to dismount, tie Valdithar in a clutch of trees, and go ahead on foot. He was close now, perhaps five or six miles.