‘He’s not the one we seek,’ High Janissary Jannick was saying. ‘He doesn’t have the Lady’s power. This is a waste of time.’
The Elder Steward gave a small, almost sad smile. ‘And yet, the Lady made her promise.’
‘The Lady?’ The High Janissary shook his head scornfully. ‘Where was the Lady when Marcus was taken? Where was the Lady when my wife was killed? Where was the Lady when my son—’ He bit down on whatever he had been about to say, as though he couldn’t bear to let it pass his lips. His face was white.
‘Jannick,’ said the Elder Steward gently.
‘The Lady is dead, Euphemia. We are the ones who have to fight. Not a boy who lacks skills or training. I won’t waste my time on a fantasy,’ said High Janissary Jannick, and he turned and stalked out of the doors.
Will was left alone with the Elder Steward in the quiet chamber. Her long white hair framed her kind, wrinkled face. The name Euphemia suited her, though he had never heard it spoken before. With the Tree Stone dark and dead-looking beside her, Will felt like he had let her down.
‘It is not your fault,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘He’s a good man. He adopted Cyprian and Marcus when they most needed a father, and raised them as his own. But he doesn’t trust outsiders. He hasn’t since his first son died six years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Will, looking back at the Tree Stone. ‘I tried, I just—’
‘Jannick is right,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘You lack training. You’re not ready.’ The Elder Steward looked into his eyes as if she was searching for something. ‘But which of us is ready for what life asks us to face? We don’t choose the moment. The moment comes whether we will it or no, and we must make ourselves ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
For a long second, she just continued to look at him. ‘Justice has told you some of it.’
In the inn of the White Hart in London, Justice had told him about an ancient world that fell to darkness. A few days earlier, he wouldn’t have believed it. But he had seen black fire tear apart a ship, and a girl his own age use her bare hands to break open chains.
‘He said that there was once a Dark King who tried to rule,’ said Will, ‘but that he was stopped by a Lady.’
Her. She. He knew so little about her, but he yearned to know everything. The glimpse he had seen of her in the mirror – she had looked at him like she knew him, like they were connected. She had looked at him with eyes like his mother. He drew in a breath.
‘They loved each other, and she killed him,’ said the Elder Steward, ‘somewhere far to the south, near the Mediterranean Sea. We don’t know how she defeated him, only that she did. She was the only one who could.’
He had so many questions. But churning at the heart of them all was, why? Why had Matthew pressed the Lady’s medallion on him? Why had Justice brought him to the Hall? Why had the Elder Steward told him he was the one the Stewards were seeking? Why did the Stewards look at him the way they did, with fear, awe and hope?
‘You think I’m her, somehow.’
The Elder Steward gave a slow nod. ‘You have her blood, passed down to you from your mother. And the Blood of the Lady is strong.’ The Elder Steward’s voice was grave. ‘Strong enough to kill an ancient king. That is why Simon seeks you out.’ She looked at him. ‘He is trying to return the Dark King. It is his one desire … the thing he seeks above all else. Under the Dark King’s dominion, dark magic would be returned to the world, humans slaughtered and subjugated as the past is brought into our present. Simon wants to stand over it all as the Dark King’s heir. And the Blood of the Lady is the only thing that can stop him.’
‘My mother … was meant to kill the Dark King … ?’ said Will.
Later he would think back on it as the moment when he had understood, all the pieces fitting together into a picture he didn’t want to see.
His mother’s destiny—
Now his mind flew back to Bowhill, kneeling beside his mother as her blood soaked into the ground. The realisation swept through him: his mother’s last words to him, her death, and the reason for it, the reason for everything that was happening to him. Will, promise.
Will’s fingers closed over the medallion. He remembered the Lady looking right at him through the mirror. He remembered his mother gasping, Run. He felt his fingers start to shake, and clamped down on it, clutching the medallion tighter.