‘They’re not going to hold,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Go,’ said Violet.
They ran across the red-lit courtyard. Cyprian and Grace were approaching from the direction of the Hall. Their faces were drawn, and Cyprian was shaking his head. It was his turn to speak in a tense, private voice.
‘Katherine’s missing. She took one of the Steward horses.’
‘Missing?’ Violet’s stomach clenched. ‘How long has she been gone?’
‘I don’t know. When was the last time you saw her?’
When was the last time any of them had seen Katherine? This morning, when I told her Will was gone. Violet’s stomach twisted. She thought of the look in Katherine’s eyes whenever she looked at Will; the pink on her cheeks whenever she said his name; the fact that she had come here at all, through the mud and rain at night, leaving the comforts of her home on the word of a boy she had met twice.
‘She went to follow Will,’ said Violet.
‘We don’t know that. She might have just – gone back to London—’
‘And leave her sister behind? She knows.’ Violet suddenly recalled the look of determination she had seen on Katherine’s face this morning as the girl rose from the table. ‘She knows where Will’s mother was killed. He must have told her.’
The image of Will and Katherine murmuring to one another last night came back to her. She ignored the twinge of hurt that Will had told Katherine about his mother, but not her. How long had he known Katherine? A few days? She tried not to feel the way she had felt locked outside her father’s house, knowing she could never return.
‘What’s this about my sister?’ Elizabeth pushed her way into the exchange.
‘She’s gone,’ said Violet.
‘But—’ said Elizabeth.
‘She’s outside the walls. A Shadow King is trying to get in. Wherever your sister is, she’s safer right now than we are.’
She immediately regretted saying it. Everyone was frightened, and Elizabeth was a child. Elizabeth’s face turned, if anything, paler, as she stood there in a muddy short dress, separated from her family. Violet felt awful.
‘We’re going to the inner fort,’ said Violet, trying to temper her message. ‘We’ll be safe there. That thing outside isn’t looking for us. It’s looking for Will. When it realises he’s not here, it will leave.’ That’s what she hoped, anyway. ‘We’re going to hide and wait it out in the safest place in the Hall.’
But she could hear Sarah’s voice in her head. We thought we could run from it. She could see Elizabeth remembering those words too.
‘Can I bring Nell?’ said Elizabeth in a small voice.
‘What?’
‘Sarah said that last time they killed the horses. Can I bring Nell?’
‘No. I’m sorry,’ said Violet. ‘There isn’t time.’
Getting to the chamber that held the Tree Stone meant going back into the citadel, something they had all avoided since the attack. Together they climbed the main steps to the immense entry doors that stood unnervingly half-open with the silent citadel behind them. Violet’s skin crawled as they entered the first of the ghostly empty hallways that had already taken on the stillness of a tomb.
The red light seeped inside the buildings, and any windows were now rectangles of crimson. Violet saw Elizabeth take in the eerily lit destruction and go pale, but the girl said nothing and even on her short legs kept up with the others as they hurried through the corridors.
The five of them hurried past the halls and the dormitories, entering a more deserted part of the citadel. The chilling screams of the shadow could be heard in the distance, but muffled by the thick stone walls of the Hall they became strange echoes, coming from everywhere and nowhere. The red-lit rooms and corridors became long dark passageways so deep in the Hall that outside light didn’t reach them.
Violet stopped at the entry to the chamber that held the Tree Stone.
She had considered taking them down into the vault and hiding them all in the underground rooms behind that heavy stone door. But the vault had held the Shadow Stone, and she had felt the irrational sense that the Shadow King would know if they hid there.
Besides, if a Shadow King could pass through any wall, a stone door would not keep it out. So instead she had brought them here, trusting in the Elder Steward’s decision to retreat to the oldest part of the citadel.
But when she looked at the dark, dead branches of the Tree Stone, she couldn’t help wondering if she was repeating a hopeless past. The stones of the doorway were cracked and shattered; his sword that she had not retrieved lay discarded. The wall was dark with his dried blood. A thick silence hung over everything.