‘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.’