The Hidden Princess (4 page)

“What do you mean, what I am?”

I remember being so astonished at his audacity, interrupting the Swan King. But Nicolas seemed more interested in staring down in disbelief at his bloodied clothes than being afraid of anything, as if amazed that his legs were still holding him upright. He was a headstrong fool then, and so he is now.

My father only smiled again. “We have so little time. There is a tale for the telling, Nicolas, but not now. If you want to save your mother’s life, then come with us, and run.”

He took no more convincing. My father took one of his arms, and I the other, and we ran as far from the traitorous mortals of Fontevrault as we could, deep into the forest.

A memory bursts across my mind, sharp and bright, the smell of leaf mould, streams of sunlight lancing down between the trees, spring-water rushing over moss-covered rocks.
Come, Larkspur
, my mother had said and we both held out our cupped hands, gathering water so cold that I gasped, carrying it to the place where Nicolas sat hunched at the foot of a larch tree, the blood-stained chemise in a filthy heap at his feet. My father and Rose stood watching him to be sure this new prize would not run, and we tipped water down his back till it ran in rivulets between his shoulder blades, coursing over the ridges of broken, bleeding skin, and Nicolas never once made a sound.

Crouching at his side with tears in her eyes, my mother looked up at my father.
My own love, get the child water for his face
.

In all the world, she was the only one whose word he ever obeyed. My father went to the stream himself, and crouching before Nicolas so that the white feathers of his cloak grew tangled in larch needles, he poured the water into Nicolas’s outstretched hands. Nicolas glanced up at him, his dark mortal eyes fierce and wild as a cat’s, and he splashed his face till the water flew out in drops that caught the last of the sunlight like old pearls. Because of that, we did not see him weep. Because of that, Nicolas became my father’s most devoted slave, and I his brother, even though we were bound only by the blood I helped him wash away, not by the blood in our veins. It may have been more than eight hundred years ago, that morning, yet I can still smell sun-warmed lavender mixed with the heat of Nicolas’s half-mortal blood: the son of a long-dead medieval queen and a Hidden lord killed with an iron blade before his miraculous child even drew breath. More mortal treachery.

And silent, I walk across the desert sand, leaving no trace behind, unlike the mortal nomads and their livestock who have left a churn of prints that will be all blown to nothing by the wind once they have packed up their camp and moved on.

The cluster of tents is quiet and dark, all campfires extinguished save one. His. I hear the soft breathing of animals, of people. A child lets out a swift cry, quickly stilled. I stand, waiting. I can’t be seen. Not with Nicolas. It’s too dangerous. Alone, he can just about move amongst ordinary mortals undetected. Not with me.

He is awake; I know he is. I sense that he is nearby. I follow the faint glow of the banked-down flames.

I find Nicolas sitting outside a tent furthest from the others, just watching the stars. They’ve never changed, not in all the long years he’s walked this earth alone. He looks away from the fire’s glow to see me coming, and my heart lifts to see that swift, rare smile.

“Larkspur.” He embraces me, but pulls away with a frown. “What in Hell’s name are you doing here? It’s too dangerous.”

I sit down beside him on the pile of rugs, glancing back at the tent. “Have you a woman inside?”

“Shut up.” Nicolas passes me a glass of steaming tea that scalds my fingertips. It tastes of sunlight: mint and hot sweetness. “I’m serious. You know the risks. Why have you come?”

I turn a little, just so I can watch his eyes, the dark hair falling around his face. “You know why I’m here, Nico. I’ve seen her in the water, too.”

Nicolas looks away, back up at the stars. “Who is she? I see her all the time.
All the time
.”

I know he’s afraid, and in all the long years I’ve known him, he’s only ever been afraid of losing me. Or my father. I sling one arm around his shoulder. The fire’s still smouldering but it’s not throwing out enough heat. “Show me what you see, Nico. Who do you see?”

“Watch out – iron.” As if he needs to warn me. The faint stink of it on the air is enough to curdle my belly. Nicolas leans forwards and plucks the iron pot out of the fire with his bare fingers. He’s withstood enough pain over the last nine hundred years that a little of it doesn’t matter to him any more. Just because he can’t die, it doesn’t mean that several different mortals haven’t gone their length to kill him, kings and princes all – including his own stepfather.

Nicolas blows on his fingers with a whispered curse and sets the pot down on the ground at our feet. Water sloshes over the pot’s rim, staining the sand. He glances at me. “
Look
.”

I obey, fixing my eyes on the water – it’s slightly oily, as if he’s cooked meat in here: for all his long life, Nicolas still has some odd mortal traits. I wait, listening to his heartbeat quicken as the water’s skin darkens and takes on a strange glassy sheen, as if the grease thickens before our eyes. And now I see her, too: a girl lying asleep, golden hair spread all over her white pillow, her lips slightly parted.

It’s what I feared the most.

Nicolas has seen Connie, Lissy’s sister
. She’s Tainted and it’s my fault. My father has been planning his revenge on the mortals for so long and now, thanks to me, Connie is just what he needs to escape the Halls.

I push away the memory of mortal figures rushing at my mother and me in the woods beyond Fontevrault Abbey, a mortal man snatching my mother, holding her close to his body. The thick cross-hatch of coarse dark hairs on his forearm. Her eyes spilling tears as she looked at me one last time, the endless silence as she crumpled to the ground into the leaves, blood spilling from her slit throat, her red hair fanning out around her as she lay on the ground like one of Tippy’s broken dolls.

I remember Nicolas dropping to his knees at my father’s feet, his chemise still stained with blood from the whip-cuts on his back, my father’s cloak of white swan feathers still blackened with my mother’s blood. There was blood everywhere,
everywhere
, and still I hear the wild desperation in Nicolas’s voice:
It’s my fault the mortals killed her. Anjou was so angry. I’ll go, I’ll go—
And my father just looked down at him and said,
You will not go. This was a mortal crime, and I will make them pay. They will all pay, Nicolas
.

And now I fear that after almost nine hundred years, my father might be on the edge of exacting that payment at long last, and I’m to blame. Lissy’s got mortal blood – she could pass through the Gateway any time she chose and remove every single last iron cross at the Reach to allow my father and the rest of the Hidden out of the Halls, but she knows what the consequences would be. She’s been strong-willed enough to refuse – so far. But Connie’s just a mortal girl, and I’m willing to wager that she has no idea what she’s dealing with – what my father’s true nature is. If the Swan King has made contact with Connie, if he’s persuaded her to open the Gateway and he escapes to release his plague, the fault will be all mine. I should have let Connie Harker die six years ago.

Hopesay Reach

“Let me out. Oh, my darling, let me out…”

My Dream is always the same: surrounded by darkness with no end and no beginning, deep and endless. And then, of course, the Voice. Again
.

“Let me out. Open it. Just for me. Come on—”

He sounds so pleading and desperate, but there’s still something warm and irresistible in his voice and I’d do anything to see his face. I’ve got to save him; I’ve got to let him out of this dark prison, but I can never find him
.

“Where are you?” I cry
.

All I hear in reply is the faint sound of laughter
.

But this time, there’s something different, too – a silver light glowing in the distance. Hope. I run towards it as hard and as fast as I can, and the closer I get to the light the more the darkness begins to make sense. I glimpse details – the wet shine of a rock wall. Small stones crunching beneath my bare feet. A cave. I’m in some kind of underground cave— And he’s close. So very, very close—

“Stop. Stop where you are.”

And I look up to see Lissy blocking my path, looking down at me with an odd expression on her face – a weird mixture of fury and tenderness. When she speaks, though, she sounds exactly the same as ever: “Don’t, Connie. Don’t interfere. Please, it’s so important. Stay away from here.”

My sister. My dead sister
.

And when Lissy reaches out to touch my face, her fingertip is so cold that I gasp. She’s even taller than I remember, dressed in a ragged pearl-silver gown that clings to her white shoulders, her narrow lean body. All that beautiful red hair hangs down past her waist now, just as if she wasn’t really dead and it’s carried on growing
.

“Let me go,” I say, urgent. “You can’t stop me. You have to help. He needs help. There’s someone trapped down here, a boy. With you. Lissy, please—”

But all she says is, “You must not pass.” Like some ancient queen from a story. And I can do nothing but reach out for her cold, cold hands
.

“Come home,” I beg. “Will you please just come home? I’m so lonely, Lissy. Mum hasn’t been the same since you left – no one has.”

She smiles, so wild and beautiful, my sister, and there are tears sliding down her white face. And all the same, she says no. She always, always says no—

Halls of the Hidden

I can’t breathe.
Thank God he is gone, thank God, thank God, thank God
—

I can only stare. I crouch on cold white stone, a hand’s breadth from the still waters of the Gateway. Still breathless, I glance over my shoulder to make sure I’m alone. The walls of the White Hall glitter at me in silence, and there is no sign of the Swan King. He’s gone – he’s really gone—

This ought to be my reflection staring back at me from the water but instead of my own face, I see another: full eyebrows – straight and dramatic – a darker shade of gold than her hair, golden-brown skin and eyes like chips of green glass. She has changed, though. Grown.
Connie
. Five years older than when I last saw her, perhaps even six. She’s about fourteen, then. The age I was when everything changed: that dangerous time. Seven and seven again, when the barrier between the mortal world and other places abrades: it’s like an old sheet worn translucent in the middle when you hold it up to the light.

Tears dry on my cheeks and my skin feels tight as a drum, tingling. Relentless cold moves up through the ancient rock, chilling my bare feet.

It really is her. Connie. My little sister. How is she doing this – why am I able to see her? Connie stares at me, her green eyes unblinking, glistening with unshed tears. She was never one to cry easily. Her lips move, but I can’t hear her voice. She’s so lovely – I wonder if she’s had a first boyfriend yet, and what her friends are like.

What is she trying to tell me?

“Connie! You must not pass,” I whisper again, frantic with the fear that we might be discovered, that my father might suddenly step from the shadows – but the image of her face shivers, as if a breeze has ruffled the surface of the water, even though I know as well as anyone else that the air never moves in the Halls of the Hidden. The waters shiver and shift and Connie fades until she is nothing but a memory.
But she was here
. I saw her face. My little sister. I can’t stop crying, tears just streaming down my face because the truth is I can never go home, no matter how much I want to.

And if
I’ve
seen my sister in the waters of the Gateway, peering into the White Hall like an uninvited guest pressing their nose against the window-pane at a party, then who else has Connie shown herself to? My father? Does the Swan King know that Connie has found a way of peering into the Halls of the Hidden, a mortal girl with the power to open the Gateway? My father spends more time alone in the White Hall than anyone. Who is to say that he has not seen Connie’s reflection staring back at him instead of his own? She is mortal, immune to the iron magic that seals the Gateway, and unlike me, I would be willing to bet that Connie has no idea what will happen if she does open it.

What if he persuades her to try?

Hopesay Reach

I woke in a sweaty panic, sitting up in bed as I gathered the duvet around my bare shoulders. It was late – very late – and my head throbbed. Headaches like that only ever came after the Dream of the boy – only ever the Voice, so desperate and lonely. And now Lissy, too. I’d dreamed of her so many times since she died – flashbacks to all the thousands of memories we shared: reading together, running along a beach in Cornwall with her hair flying out like a bright flag against the blue sky – but this was different. She
looked
different. Taller, with all that hair.
And trapped in that dark, dark place
…

I hit the light switch, flooding my bedroom with comforting yellow light from the blue-and-white painted china lamp I’d had since I was five.
Jesus, Connie. Get a grip
. I reached for the packet of aspirin at my bedside and chewed up three of them, a bitter and chalky mess. It hurt to swallow. How many hours had it been since I’d left Mum and Nick to faff over their packing and come up to bed with a Marmite sandwich and Nick’s cinnamon-spiked cocoa? The cup and plate had disappeared from my bedside table, so one of them must have looked in after I’d fallen asleep. They’d gone to bed now, though. The house was quiet. I was alone. There was no point in calling out. How would I even explain this to them, anyway? Where would I even begin?
I have dreams that feel so real. Too real
. I didn’t want to go back to Deborah the Counsellor with her dyed purple hair and questionable standards of personal hygiene. I’d spent long enough with her after Lissy died.