The Hidden Princess (15 page)

Joe stops before a battered door, white paint peeling off like wet scabs. “In here.” His voice is hard and clipped: he holds the door open without even looking at me.

Larkspur moves to walk in but I lay a hand on his arm, trying to ignore the way he flinches as if even my touch disgusts him.

Don’t
. I speak right into his mind.
The Fontevrault might have come with iron – you said yourself we can’t trust them, not even Adam Harker. Let me go first
.

He doesn’t reply and I’ve no idea if Larkspur has closed his mind off to me completely, but either way he stands back to let me past.

“Lissy, be careful,” Joe says, quietly.

I turn and smile at him. “Idiot. What can he do to me?”

I’m ready to meet the Fontevrault: I’m ready to meet the man I always thought was my father. I walk into a long, low-ceilinged chamber with a row of tiny windows along one wall – again, they’re more like arrow-slits in a castle. There’s a table laid out in the middle of the room, and here he is.

“
Lissy
.” Adam speaks my name but doesn’t move from his seat behind the scrubbed wooden table. He looks older, his hair thinner on top than I remember and completely grey now. It’s a shock. “Lissy,” he says again, as if testing out the shape of the letters in his mouth. He stares at me from head to toe with a kind of bemused horror.
It’s probably the cloak
, I think.
A feather overkill
. Which makes me want to laugh as if I am a girl again, not a queen.

I can’t help staring right back at him, tracing over every line of his face, every detail: the tanned skin, the slant of his nose and the faint chicken-pox scar on his left ear he’d once told me was a fairy’s kiss. I hardly know what to say. I’m numb, frozen. Wasn’t there a time, long ago, when me and Dad didn’t speak, and didn’t that cut me to the quick? Some silly and unimportant thing – I discovered he was having an affair, that’s it. I found a letter, a card. I can still remember the look in his eyes when I said,
Who’s she?
Pure irritation. I think that was the first moment I knew I wasn’t really his child: that I couldn’t be. He would never have looked at me like that if I were. He never would have looked at Rafe and Connie with such an expression in his eyes. I knew. I sense Joe and Larkspur at my back, waiting, and I step forwards.

“Lissy?” Dad says again, and it feels wrong to think of him in that way now – he’s not
Dad
any more. He’s just Adam Harker. My real father is dead. I killed the Swan King: I cut his face and I poisoned him with iron. Adam gets to his feet, stumbling a little against the carved wooden chair, and there’s a silence in which we’re meant to hug. But we don’t; we just stand there staring at each other. It’s been too long, and things have changed too much. He’s one of the Fontevrault, and I’m here to negotiate with him – that’s all.

“Is it only you?” I ask, and the words hang in the air between us.

Adam nods. “For now, Lissy.”

Larkspur glances from Adam to me and back again, his eyes dark with grief. “You hid her from the rest of the Fontevrault for fourteen years,” he says. “You betrayed them. Why do the Fontevrault trust you alone with Lissy, Adam Harker?”

Adam watches him carefully across the table, studying Larkspur with some fascination, his eyes travelling from my brother to me and back again, tracing the way our features echo each other’s. “They don’t trust me, but they don’t know I’m here, either. Given that we’re all still alive and there’s no immortal plague, I assume that your father is either dead or has changed his mind about taking his revenge on the mortal race?” I can’t tell if he’s being serious or mocking the Swan King, and I’m surprised to find how angry it makes me.

“I killed him.” My voice rings out in the silence.

Adam flinches, a muscle in his jaw tightening as if I’ve just committed a terrible faux pas at a dinner party. So there’s still some part of this man that sees me as his daughter: murder is not a suitable pastime for a well-brought-up girl in the Harker family, even if the victim in question was his worst and most hated enemy.

“The Hidden only want their freedom, nothing else,” I go on. “The Hidden have been in darkness for too long. They need light. Now that the Swan King is dead, there’s no reason the Hidden can’t be free. We don’t wish any harm on the mortals.”

Except perhaps Iris, with her all-consuming desire for a child. Except perhaps Briar, with his unhealthy desire to hold a mortal girl—

Larkspur says nothing, but I can’t help uneasily wondering where Iris is. I try to ignore a vivid memory of Briar with his hands on Connie, desperate for the warmth of her body. It hadn’t been easy to make Briar leave her alone. I’d had to use all the force I could muster, all the skills my father taught me. Will I really be able to control the Hidden roaming free in the world with so many mortal temptations close at hand?

“If the Swan King really is dead, that does change things – or at least I hope it does,” Adam says.

“If you’re one of the Fontevrault, can’t you do anything to stop them coming after my people?”

My people
. The Hidden. Despite everything, despite how the Hidden used me, how I loathe them in so many ways, I’ve become one of them, and the cold shock of it jolts through me. They need me. They depend on me.

Adam looks at me across the table, and it feels like he and I are the only ones in the room. He was my dad once, but I’m trading on old loyalties now. “I’ll ask your brother to raise a false alarm,” Adam says, and I stare at him, confused. How will Larkspur be able to help? He’s pure Hidden: he holds even less currency with the Fontevrault than I do.

Adam shakes his head, looking at me with something approaching pity. “
Rafe
,” he says. “Your brother Rafe, Lissy. He lives in India now – if he alerts the rest of the Fontevrault to a Hidden sighting out there, it’ll be enough to divert their attention for a short while – they’ll be horrified at just the suspicion that even one of you has managed to escape the Halls.”

Rafe
. I’d genuinely forgotten him: my own mortal brother.

“Keep the Hidden away from mortal places as much as you can – if news of any other sightings filters back to the rest of the Fontevrault, I won’t be able to help you. Larkspur is right – they don’t trust me.” Adam lifts his gaze, fixing his eyes on my face. “The Fontevrault might not be able to kill you, Lissy, but they certainly don’t want anyone else to know that you were ever born, that you were even possible. They’ll keep you prisoner, so whatever happens, make sure you’re not caught.”

It’s just what the Swan King said to me:
It’s not my wish for you to be kept prisoner till the end of time
. And I push away the mental image of being held in some kind of laboratory until one by one the last humans on earth die and the walls crumble around me. I shiver, wrapping the hawk-feathers closer around my shoulders.

“All right, then. We’ll stay hidden.”

“You should return to the Halls,” Adam says, sharply. “You’ll be safe there if you allow us to seal the Gateway after you.
If
you ensure it’s not opened again, Lissy.”

“
No
.” Larkspur and I both answer at the same instant. I never want to set foot in the Halls of the Hidden again. It’s nothing but a place of darkness, of sorrow, tunnels littered with rotten finery and the bones of mortals who never found the way out. I never want to walk those tunnels again. I never want to taste the soily tang of that stale, dark air. Never.

“We’ll hide,” I go on, speaking so fast and so firmly that Adam doesn’t have the chance to interrupt. “There aren’t many wild places in the world, but there are enough for us.”

“Then you’ll have to
stay
hidden,” Joe says, brusque as ever. “The Fontevrault aren’t going to stop hunting you down just because the Swan King’s dead: if you believe that, you’ve even less sense than I thought.”

“They won’t find us. No mortal will ever find us.” Larkspur replies before I open my mouth. “We must leave now and gather the tribe, ready to flee.”

“No,” Adam says, again. “You can’t hide. You’ll have to return to the Halls, Lissy.”

I stare at Adam a moment. I’m so much taller now. “Never. It’s never going to happen. The Hidden will not return to the Halls, and that is my final word on the matter. Where do you propose we gather?” I look my brother in the eye, daring him to meet my gaze. Sooner or later, he’ll have to, no matter how much he despises me. “In the woods again?”

Larkspur shakes his head, still refusing to look at me. “No. Joe is right. We’re supposed to be in hiding – we want the Fontevrault to know that we can live in the mortal world without disturbing anyone, without even being seen, just as we did for fourteen years before the Swan King claimed you, Lissy. The forest isn’t safe. There is sacred ground in Hopesay Edge beyond the boundaries of the Reach. It’s not bound by the power of the old standing stones like the house is, but by the trees themselves.”

I want to argue that there are plenty of trees in the woods, but I wait in what I hope is dignified silence for him to continue.

“The yew trees,” Larkspur goes on, impatient because I don’t understand, because most of our father’s great knowledge died with him at the moment I took his life. “In the churchyard – it’s been sacred ground since long before the church was raised from wood and then stone. The trees are more than two thousand years old and they hold their own power – they can’t protect us from the edge of an iron weapon, but lych-yard yews have always offered their own measure of concealment for the Hidden. Any mortal who chances past won’t easily see us gathered there. We’ll appear as nothing more than a trick of the light, just shifting shadows.”

“You’ll be safer in the Halls,” Adam insists. “On the side of the Gateway where you belong, Lissy. You’ll be truly protected there – the Fontevrault wouldn’t follow if they knew you were safely concealed down there, even if they were able to find their way through the tunnels.”

“Listen. The Hidden will
never
return to the Halls – give them their freedom and they’ll leave you all alone. That’s all we want.” I stare at him, willing him to agree with me. He’s got to. He’s our only chance. “Consider this, Adam – how could we ever be sure that the Fontevrault wouldn’t decide to invade the Halls and attack us? The Gateway only binds the Hidden – any mortal could cross over. It was probably only their fear of my father’s plague that stopped the Fontevrault invading and killing the Hidden before now.”

Adam watches me a moment, then at last he nods. “If that’s what you want, Lissy. But if you’re seen, if the Hidden are spotted in the outside world, I won’t be able to help you.”

“That’s fair. The churchyard, then. I’ll gather the Hidden there, and we’ll leave Hopesay by dawn.” I turn back to Larkspur, daring him to look away this time, meeting the full force of the fury and hatred in his eyes. “Will you help me bring them? We’ll be able to act more quickly together.”

Larkspur nods, curt and cold. “I will do whatever it takes to protect the Hidden from mortal harm.” He’s never going to forgive me, and how can I blame him?

I turn back to Adam and Joe. “I’d like to see Connie before I go.”

Adam frowns. He looks tired just at the mention of her name. “Absolutely not. I’ve already lost one daughter to the Hidden.”

“I need to see her.” Does he even know that Connie is Tainted, that she has abilities she does not understand? I could so easily hurl Adam from one end of this stone-cold room to the other without touching a hair of his head, and the anger is rising in me.

“He’s Fontevrault,” Larkspur cuts in, as if he has just seen the colour of my thoughts, his voice still so hard and cold. “Don’t anger him. They can’t be trusted as it is.”

Joe glanced from Adam to me and back again. “Larkspur’s right.” He shot me a look, telling me to leave it.

Part of me wants to walk out of here right this minute and find Connie’s room, to just take her with me. It’s not as if any of them could stop me: after all the Swan King taught me, I doubt that even Larkspur could stand in my way if he chose to. But Larkspur is right: Adam Harker might have been my dad once, but he’s still a member of the Fontevrault, and I’m here to negotiate our freedom. I’ll find a way of reaching Connie. She needs my help; I’ve abandoned her once before and I won’t do it again.

Adam stands up again, stepping awkwardly around the table, and I remember a day long ago when he took the stabilizers off my first bike, and he pushed me around the garden with one of his hands warm against my back, and finally he said,
Go on, then, Tinkerbell – it’s your turn now
. I remember pedalling so hard, so fast that I just kept going and when I finally crashed into the lilac tree at the bottom of the garden, all I could hear was him whooping and shouting,
Go Lissy
, as if I’d just won a marathon, not fallen off my bike. And yet even in this dark room, in a lonely and forgotten corner of Hopesay Reach, I feel like I can smell white lilac flowers, and see the petals tumbling slowly to the grass, tangling in my hair. But that was then, and this is now. He was my dad, but not any more.

Larkspur speaks to me without opening his mouth for the first time since I killed the Swan King.
You’ve secured our freedom for now, if we can trust him. Time is running out
. He might hate me, he might wish that I could die so that he could kill me, but he is right: we’ve got to go. Connie will have to wait. It’s time to rein in the Hidden, to herd them to the safety of the yew trees in Hopesay churchyard before we run for ever.

I paced over to my bedroom window and sat on the sill, wet hair dripping down my back, tucking my legs up beneath me as I looked out over the green blanket of woodland, all spread with a layer of thick grey mist. I shivered. It was like I could still feel the Hidden boy’s hands on me, his cold, cold hands, and no matter how long I stayed under the jets of hot water I’d never be clean again. I shivered uncontrollably. If Lissy hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t come, what would he have done, that boy? The sky was clearing a little now, strands of cloud touched by the setting sun. The party was meant to be starting. They’d all be arriving soon – maybe there were already cars in the lane, kids cadging lifts off older brothers and sisters, some of them cycling down the lanes, some even walking. A party was a party – people would do pretty much anything to make sure they got there.