The Hidden Princess (17 page)

I thought she was my sister
.

My whole life was just an illusion, a carefully woven fabric of lies upon lies upon lies, and the woods were silent, and as I walked, not even caring any more about the twigs and stones digging into the soles of my bare feet, I couldn’t stop the tears spilling down my face, as if crying could actually change anything or make it better.

It wasn’t long before I heard laughter, though, a boy singing: Blue, ripping off a song that had been all over the radio the last couple of weeks. By the sound of it, he wasn’t alone – I caught snatches of laughter, a girl joining in with the singing, a couple of voices I didn’t recognize and someone swearing. Picking my way across a carpet of last year’s dead leaves and pine cones, I found them all in the clearing where I’d met Lissy just a few hours earlier, where that beautiful, evil thing had put his hands on me. There was no sign of the Hidden now, as if all that had been nothing but a terrible dream.

Amy’s boyfriend, Nye, had been true to his word and managed to get his white Transit van up one of the forestry tracks; everyone was unloading speakers while Amy sat on a blanket with Mika in his pram beside her, waving at me across the clearing. When I saw Mika in the pram rather than in Amy’s arms, I fought the urge to run and bundle him into her lap where he’d be safe. The Hidden were everywhere, and maybe those old stories about babies were true. Lissy had been taken, after all, when she was just a baby.

Amy jumped up from the blanket she’d spread out on the dead leaves, leaving Mika still in his pram. “Connie! What the hell is going on?” She rushed over, staring down at my bare feet. “Er, would you like to elaborate?” She gave me a long look up and down, then hugged me. Hard. “Bloody hell, are you all right? You’ve been crying, haven’t you? What’s going on?”

“Mika,” I said, trying to sound normal. “You should take him home, Ames. It’s not safe up here.”

She gave me a weird look. “Only last night you were trying to persuade me to bring him to the party. What’s the matter?”

How on earth was I going to explain? She’d think I was crazy; she’d never believe me. “My dad turned up. He doesn’t know I’m here – I had to sneak out without him knowing, and all my shoes were downstairs – that’s why I asked you to bring boots.” I pulled away, glancing across at Blue, who was sitting very close to Jessie. So close that their heads were almost touching. Neither of them seemed to have noticed me. I took a deep breath. “Listen, Amy, you’ve got to go. You and Mika—” I broke off. Everyone knew I’d been in counselling for nearly two years after Lissy died – no, after she
went
– and Amy was one of the few people in Hopesay who knew exactly why: that I hadn’t accepted Lissy was dead. Amy also had no reason to believe that I wasn’t a little delusional and damaged. I knew I’d have to tread carefully or she’d just write off everything I said. I took another long, shuddery breath. “Look, Amy – I just don’t think it’s going to be safe up here tonight, that’s all.”

“I’m not staying for the party, Con, you know that. What’s the matter? Blue said you’d been texting him all afternoon wanting to call the whole thing off. Why?”

“There’s some people coming that we didn’t invite—”

Amy gave me a sarcastic smile. “You’re not kidding. It was bound to happen, wasn’t it? What did you expect, though, seriously? You’re just going to have to go with it, Con. I’m sure they’ll all just be up for a good time, whoever they are.”

“No, really, listen. Blue doesn’t know. Someone – someone at school told me there’s a load of really hardcore people coming. I’m properly scared, Amy. It’s going to get genuinely out of control. I really think you and Mika should go home now.”

Amy shrugged. “Well, that’s my plan, anyway. Don’t worry, Con – Nye’s here and he’s not going to let anything happen to me and Mika. I’ll even get him to walk us home if that makes you happy. Listen, keep an eye on Blue, won’t you?” She glanced over to where her brother was sitting, now arm in arm with Jessie. Amy smiled. “You do realize he’s only glued to Jessie Mayhew because he’s given up on you, right?” Amy reached out, squeezing my shoulder, and for a second I had to fight the urge to cry, just because I wished life was as simple as Amy thought, that I was only really upset because Blue was all over another girl.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, quietly. “He’s my best friend.”

“That’s always difficult with a guy and a girl, though, isn’t it?” Amy reached over to Mika’s pram and delved into the basket underneath, pulling out a pair of fleece socks and her green wellies covered with spray-painted silver dots – the ones she’d worn to Glastonbury the year before, when Mika was unheard of, and I’d got into the most spectacular amount of trouble for going with her because I was only thirteen. We’d caught the train, and throughout the whole journey I remember thinking how easy it would be to get off at the next stop and just go home, but I never did.

This time there wasn’t even a train I could catch; there was no way of turning back.

I spread my falcon-wings, banking on currents of warm air. I sense Lissy’s presence nearby, her rage, her panic, and looking down at the forest floor, I see a good number of the Hidden swarming westwards through the thinning trees, heading for the shelter of the lych-yard yews. Finally, here’s Lissy herself at the back of the group, cloak of feathers tugging out behind as she lends an arm to an Elder: one of the White Hall guards I feared so much as a child, but who now needs to lean on her queen in order to keep up, blinded by sunlight, dizzied by fresh air, her black robes tangling and twisting in the dead leaves and broken branches.

Lissy, where are the rest? Briar, Iris – the others?
I’ve hardly used her name since she killed our father, and it feels wrong, as if I’ve forgiven her, as if I no longer wish there was a way she too could die. She does not reply – her mind is silent, closed off from mine behind a white wall of cold fury. There’s a handful of Hidden that I can’t spot here – Briar for one, Iris for another, both totally unaccounted for – and as I land, taking on my Hidden-form again, I feel a clutch of fear within me that makes me wish I was still in my falcon-form. The falcon is never afraid.

The trees are thinning now, the woodland giving way to a steep, grassy hillside tumbling down towards the lonely lights of Hopesay Edge, just a jumble of cottages huddling beneath an enormous night sky now lit by a rising full moon.

“Where are the rest? Briar? Iris?” I demand again, landing at Lissy’s side as she helps the Elders negotiate the dew-damp grass, but she doesn’t stop. She just carries on walking, turning at last to throw me a hateful glance over her shoulder.

What right has
she
got to be furious with me?

“Briar did not come when I called – not all the Hidden are loyal to me, Larkspur, in case you hadn’t noticed.” She sounds just like our father, her voice blank with rage.

“Did you really think Briar would answer your call after you humiliated him like that?” She’d hurled him across the clearing for putting his hands on her sister, just as my father once slammed her across the White Hall itself: not a punishment easily forgotten or forgiven, however much deserved.

“Why else do you think I asked for your help?” Lissy walks away, shepherding our people towards the churchyard without looking back at me. I am the one who is supposed to be furious with her, not the other way around.

I wish he were here, our father.

“I’ll keep on searching.” I know I should just turn and run with all my strength and speed towards the heart of the ancient woodland, that I can’t fail this time, that I must find Iris before she does something stupid and gets hurt – and Briar too, for what he is worth – but the words leave my mouth before I have the chance to swallow them back. “What right do you have to be angry with me?”

Lissy stops again, and the Elder leaning on her arm slumps. We’re running out of time. The weaker Hidden have no strength to fight angry mortals, and sooner or later, those mortals will come in panicked hordes, searching for their children. “Why did no one tell me?” Lissy turns to look at me over her golden-feathered shoulder, speaking in a furious hiss. “Why did no one ever say there was another one like me?”

Nicolas
. Sheer, freezing-cold panic washes through me. He is here, and he has not told me, which means he is hiding something. An intention he knows I will try to stop him realizing. There is nothing in the world Nicolas can do to Lissy but make her suffer, and the only mortal on earth who Lissy loves with her whole heart, who never betrayed her even once is her sister. Connie. Connie, whose face Nicolas has seen in the water for weeks on end. He knows who she is, and I would give anything for my father to be here now because the Swan King was the only one Nicolas ever really listened to, his loyalty utterly wedded to my father. The Swan King is the only one on earth who could stop Nicolas now, and now he is gone, I am left to try.

Lissy is already walking away.

“Wait!”
But Lissy doesn’t wait for an answer; she just helps my father’s old guard down the hillside towards the safety of the yew trees in the lych-yard.

And the truth is, if Nicolas finds Connie Harker before I do, he’ll kill her.

The clearing was heaving – groups of people sitting around on the floor, even a few sitting up in the dark trees, smoking and laughing and kicking their legs. It was a clear night and I could see bright points of starlight between the mesh of branches. Music pounded on and on, beating in time with my heart and my blood. Blue was still glued to Jessie, and although I was always at the centre of a crowd of people, I was always alone.

“Why d’you keep wanting to stop all the fun, Connie?” Kyle Ayrshire shouted in my ear, flecking the side of my face with spit. “It’s like, the party of the year, and after this we’re all just going to be doing exams and getting old.” He turned to the blurred faces around us – Blue and Jessie, Tia, everyone I hung out with at school. “You’re a total hero, Connie Harker! Stop telling us to go home, OK?”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “She’s spinning out, more like. Get a grip, Connie – no one’s listening and every time you tell us all we should go home, everyone just thinks you’re being a complete freak. Was it that bump on the head you got in maths? What was even going on with that, anyway?”

I stared at Jessie helplessly, trying to imagine what she would say if I told them the truth:
Oh, yeah. The whole maths thing… I’d just seen a vision of an immortal king who tricked me into letting him escape so that he could destroy the entire human race. Luckily my dead sister was around, who is neither dead nor human, and she murdered him before he got the chance
.

Blue frowned. I could tell he was totally confused. “She’s not a freak, Jess, but you should just relax, Con.”

All I could say – again – was, “Guys, we should get out of here. We should all go home.” But none of them could hear me, the music and the shouting had taken over the night, and I knew that even if they could hear me, no one would listen. Not tonight.

A distinct prickling sensation slid down my back, and I turned away from Kyle, scanning the crowd behind me. That’s when I saw her. Head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, a wild mess of dark hair tangled with strands of ivy, face like a model from one of the black-and-white arty shoots in
Vogue
, angular and inhuman, mind-blowing beauty. A Hidden girl with ivy in her hair: I knew there’d be more, that the Hidden would come in their hundreds. I grabbed Blue’s arm, but then realized just how much I’d have to explain, and by that time a crowd from his drama class had caught up with us and I’d lost his attention again, for now, anyway.

The Hidden were here. They were among us. They were coming for us.

Joe
. All I had to do was run through the woods back down to the Reach and find him. He’d faced the Hidden before – he’d know what to do. Maybe Joe would even know how to find Lissy. She could deal with this – she’d hurled that creepy Hidden boy clear across the clearing. I felt cold inside just thinking about that, and couldn’t even be sure what disturbed me the most: the memory of his cold hands on my skin, or Lissy’s inhuman strength and her ruthlessness.
She’s not dead, she’s not dead
. The words spun crazily in my head, and I still couldn’t make sense of them.

I grabbed Blue’s arm again, tugging him away from Jessie and the drama lot for a moment. “Listen,” I said, “I’m heading back to the house for a minute – be careful, right? And, Blue – I know everyone thinks I’m being crazy, but I really, really think you should go home. Please.”

Blue gave me a look, half totally exasperated and half worried. “What’s
wrong
with you tonight, Connie? Have you taken something?”

“No, I haven’t taken anything. Listen. You’re my oldest friend in Hopesay, Blue. We’ve been friends since my first week at school, when everyone else was too embarrassed to talk to me because my sister had just died. Just trust me. When have I ever lied or tried to bullshit you?”

He stared back – a weird, frightened understanding in his eyes. “Never.”

“I never have and you know it.” I tightened my grip on his arm till I could feel the lean cords of muscle beneath his lumberjack shirt, beneath his skin. He just stared at me, and I didn’t look away. “Go home, Blue,” I whispered. “Take the others, as many as you can, and get out of here. Please.”

And it felt like a hundred years had passed with just Blue and me staring at each other when Jessie appeared at his side, giving me a poisonous look. For once Blue paid her no attention at all.

“I’m going back to the Reach, OK?” I said, quietly, so that Jessie couldn’t hear me above the music. “I need to find Joe. I’m serious, Blue. Take the others and get out of here.”

Blue nodded, never taking his eyes away from mine. “OK, Connie. Listen, do you want someone to go with you?”

I shook my head. “I’ll be OK. Just
go
.”

I had to find Lissy, find Joe. I couldn’t finish this alone. I pushed through the crowd away from Blue, praying that he’d be true to his word and wondering what Joe was even going to do about all this when I managed to wake him up. Had Dad bothered to stick around? Would he make the effort to see me in the morning? What could we do, anyway? With Dad and Joe on board there’d still only be three of us – I could see now that even Dad would struggle to get rid of this many people, no matter if he was a member of this ridiculous all-powerful Fontevrault group. I didn’t like his chances of getting rid of the Hidden, either.