The Hidden Princess Read Online Free Page B

centuries. The plague won’t punish them, only the innocent.”
    “I betrayed her once,” he says, never taking his eyes from mine. “I should have been at her side; I should have saved her life. What can I do but honour her memory, Lissy?”
    “You don’t need to honour her memory with blood,” I whisper. We’re standing so close I feel the sweet warmth of his breath on my face. “Honour it with love.”
    And for just the briefest moment, the hardness in his eyes softens, and I see my father as I’ve never seen him before – a wild and beautiful creature, full of compassion, and a tiny flame of hope stirs inside me. Have I found my way out of this prison, at last? But my father says nothing; he just turns and walks away, the cloak of white feathers trailing along the ground behind him, silent as a fall of snow.
    He leaves with no promises, and I’m afraid. One day, sooner or later, the Swan King will find a way to end his imprisonment in the White Hall of the Hidden, whether that’s by forcing me to open the Gateway, or some other more complicated trick, less easy to combat. And when that day comes, he will spread a plague from one end of the earth to the other that will destroy every last man, woman and child – unless I can find a way of stopping him.

4
Larkspur
    Sahara Desert, Morocco
    Stars prickle the desert night. It’s getting cold even though the heat was searing just a few hours ago, and I wrap the cloak closer about my shoulders. In my mind I’m centuries away from this sea of sand, this quiet darkness, back to the morning I stood with my father at the foot of a tower with the sun hammering against my head, looking down at a boy lying face-down in the dust. The back of his white chemise was thick with dried blood – I remember wondering at the thick dark richness of his blood.
    “So cruel, Larkspur,” my father said to me. “The mortals beat their young; they break their skin.” And he crouched down at the boy’s side, the white feathers of his cloak puddling in the dirt. “Get up,” he said in our own Hidden tongue, a language no ordinary mortal could possibly understand. The second test – Nicolas had already survived a fall that would have killed a mortal. “Get up now, Nicolas de Mercadier.”
    The boy turned his head to the side and his eyes snapped open. More dark blood leaked from his ear, a glossy trickle across dusty earth and grit.
Nicolas
.
    “Am I in Hell?” He thought he was dead, yet there was no trace of fear on his face, and I remember wondering if his life was so miserable he would really rather be dead. With a small moan like a hound with a thorn in its pad, he turned to lie on his side, still looking up at us. His gaze travelled from my father to me and back again, still without a trace of fear.
    “I said, get up.” My father reached out with one hand and hauled Nicolas to his feet; his bloodied face screwed itself into knots of agony, but my father paid no attention to that.
    “Who are you?” Nicolas coughed, spitting blood into the dust at his feet. Despite the fearless look in his eyes, he was trembling all over now; he kept clenching his hands into fists but every time his fingers unfurled they were still shaking.
    My father smiled. “Listen to me, Nicolas. Anjou married your mother knowing she had a bastard child hidden at Fontevrault Abbey, but had he known what manner of bastard you are, all the gold in Christendom would not have been enough to tempt him. Thanks to my sister Rose and her loose tongue, Anjou now knows exactly what you are – what your mother has smuggled into his family.”
    “What do you mean, what I am?”
    I remember being so astonished at his audacity, interrupting the Swan King. But Nicolas seemed more interested in staring down in disbelief at his bloodied clothes than being afraid of anything, as if amazed that his legs were still holding him upright. He was a headstrong fool then, and so he is now.
    My father only smiled again.