by Violet Grace
The Poynter Room is cordoned off with orange tape and a sign that reads ‘Closed for Restoration Work’. The room itself is shrouded in gloom, the windows replaced with boards. But aside from the windows, it’s as if the attack of ravens never happened. The tables and chairs have been pushed neatly to one side, the broken glass and plaster swept away. I can make out a thin crack in the ceiling but, for all I know, that could have been there before.
‘Where is she?’ I say to Agent Eight, who’s standing in the doorway with a grin that I want to rip off her face.
But it’s not her who speaks.
‘Are you ready to stop playing games now?’
I slowly turn towards the voice that uttered those exact words to me a few days ago.
‘Marshall?’
He’s seated at a lone table on the far side of the room, a bottle of wine and one glass in front of him.
‘You’ve come to your senses,’ he says.
‘What? No,’ I say, looking at him closely. There’s something different about him. His navy pinstripe suit and red tie are impeccable as usual, but the boyish glint in his eye has gone, replaced by something harsh. He looks tired, distracted. A vein pulses in his neck. The little finger on his left hand quivers.
He points to the chair opposite. It’s a command rather than an invitation.
I stay standing.
‘You’ve been far less forthcoming than I’d hoped. It’s time we talked openly.’ His mouth twitches at the corner. The tremor in his little finger has spread to the rest of his fingers.
A cold shiver shoots through me. Every instinct in my body is screaming at me to run, but I have to see this through, to finally work out what’s really is going on.
I catch a glance exchanged between him and Agent Eight. They know each other?
‘Wait, you work for the Agency?’ I say to Marshall. ‘Has all this been some elaborate recruitment exercise?’
Agent Eight laughs. ‘I told you the dumb act wasn’t all an act,’ she says to Marshall.
‘I do not work for the Agency,’ Marshall says calmly. The twitching in his fingers is becoming more noticeable, like he’s having a seizure.
‘There’s more at stake here than you realise, Marshall,’ I seethe.
‘Oh, I know what’s at stake, my dear. And you’ve already given me more than you know.’
As I watch the manufactured warmth drain from his face, I wonder if he’s actually insane.
It’s his eyes that change first. They switch, shade by shade, melding from brown to green. Like an autumn leaf, his hair gradually turns to auburn. His cheekbones re-form, sharpening and stretching the skin as though he’s undergoing a sudden growth spurt. His forehead lengthens to create perfect facial symmetry.
My wings flare from my back, readying to flee.
Reaching down, he pulls a familiar dagger from his boot. The encrusted ruby glistens as he flicks it. His suit is replaced with a black leather kilt and a long leather coat, opened over a white shirt with a ruffed collar. A bulbous ring of amber sits on his little finger like a tumour.
Damius.
‘What … what have you done with Marshall?’
‘I am Marshall,’ he says. ‘Have been for these past thirteen years. Musgrave didn’t put up much of a fight in the end. Last of the Musgrave family line. And good riddance, too.’
I stare at him in horror, forcing breath back into my lungs.
‘It’s the perfect disguise, don’t you think? The Order tore the realms apart looking for me after the rebellion. And here I was, all this time, hiding in plain sight. The Fae have skirmished with the Musgrave family through the centuries. It was the perfect place to wait for the right moment to claim the throne that should always have been mine.’
He smiles at me and signals for me to join him at the table. It’s a gesture you’d expect from a friend, not the monster who has ruined your life many times over.
‘It didn’t have to go this way. You could have just given me what was mine and been spared all of this. But your mother’s lapdogs and those fanatics in the Order with their misplaced loyalties put paid to that. I gave you every opportunity to come to your senses. But you insist on being difficult.’
My clenched fists itch to strike something as fury pumps through my veins.
‘Now I ask myself, why just take the Crown when I can have everything?’ he says as he conjures the Luck of Edenhall onto the table.
So the theft was a setup. I glance back at Agent Eight. She shrugs.
The power vibrating from the Chalice repulses me. It’s wrong; every cell in me shudders. Every fibre of my being warns me not to get too close.
‘Now,’ Damius says. ‘Where is that key you’ve been withholding all these years?’
‘Where’s my mother?’ I counter through gritted teeth.
He points towards the tiled wall behind me. I turn to look at a spot I’ve walked past dozens of times. Through the dim light, I make out what used to be the tile painting of the Statue of Venus. It’s now a gouge in the wall.
My chest aches as I run over to the empty wooden frame. She was trying to tell me. All these years, she was waiting for me to save her. And on some level, I knew. I just hadn’t learned how to believe it.
Crumpling to my knees, my hands leave streaks of blood on the wood and tiles either side of where my mother’s life force used to be. I flop my head forwards on the cold hard tiles and liquid anguish streams down my cheeks.
‘She’s quite safe,’ he says. ‘I’ve relocated her somewhere nice and cosy, somewhere she can make herself useful without getting in the way.’
She’s been trapped in the tiles for years, with Damius draining her power like a leech. I sat at the table right next to her just days ago, when I was having my birthday lunch. She was trying to tell me with her beckoning hand in my peripheral vision. Perhaps she was trying to warn me about Marshall. But I wasn’t able to make sense of what I was seeing. I just thought I was imagining things. Or that I was losing my mind. And Damius sat there the whole time, watching my mother’s futile attempts and my cluelessness.
‘Come now, let us not dwell on the past,’ he says. We can help each other.’
I turn back to the table. I hate Damius so much I don’t just want to kill him once; I want to make him suffer and then kill him over and over and over again.
‘Felicity delivered you to me. And so shall you deliver me the key,’ he says as I approach.
He and Agent Eight are looking at each other and my stomach turns. Agent Eight is gazing at the man she loves, but he’s looking at her like she’s staff, an employee. Clearly she hasn’t moved on since they tried to make their moral fairy baby. It would break my heart – if I didn’t hate her guts. She betrayed me with false promises about my mother to lure me here. And she’s betrayed the Agency too. She doesn’t want the key to keep if safe from anyone who’d misuse it; she wants it for my uncle.
Damius looks kindly at me. ‘You and I are so similar,’ he says, his voice softening.
‘I am nothing like you,’ I spit.
‘Oh, but you are,’ he says, standing up. ‘Consider the symmetry. Our childhoods – both soured by meddling Fae. I am just as much a victim of their perverse rules as you. I was just a boy when I was discarded, abandoned – robbed of all that was promised to me.’
He pivots, turning his back to me and walks in a small circle, like a scholar demonstrating a proof to a prized student.
‘For most of your life you’ve been an embarrassment to the Order. Of course, they flatter you with titles now, but where were they all those years ago?’ He lowers his voice, looking straight into my eyes. ‘Think about it, Francesca. You were next in line to the throne, but they abandoned you as a child. They sent the old woman to look over you and teach you a trick or two just in case they might one day need you. But it’s hardly the way to treat royalty, is it? I’ve seen household animals treated better. You know it’s true.’
My small crack of uncertainty wide
ns into a gaping crevice.
‘Do you really think they will ever accept a half-blood like you? Come, Francesca, don’t be so naive. To them, you are nothing more than a puppet. Of course, they’ll dress you in beautiful costumes and put you on show now and again. But they will never relinquish their hold on the strings. Does anyone ever think to ask how a puppet feels? What it needs? What it desires?’
Tom’s face flashes in my mind.
‘You already know the answer. They have no use for you besides being a tool, to misdirect people’s attention, to keep me off the throne, and to maintain their own grip on power. No doubt they’ll provide you with every luxury, as they tried to do with me. But that’s all the better to control you, in your gilded cage. You’ll want for nothing – except your dignity and self-determination.
‘Ask yourself, what do you really know of those who claim to be your friends? The Chancellor? The Supreme Executor? They have asked much of you, but what have they given in return?’
He pauses again, his eyes boring in to me.
‘I have been dealing with the royal household far longer than you, dear niece, and I know how they work. They feel entitled to run your life, telling you what you can and cannot do, pretending all the while that they know best. But what say did you have in this? In any of it?’
He walks slowly back to the table and sips his wine.
I say nothing. I don’t want to admit it, and I know he’s trying to push my buttons, manipulate me, but part of what he says is true. I’m watched everywhere I go. I have to sneak out of my window like a rebellious kid just to get some privacy. They wouldn’t allow me to find Tom. They have treated me like a child. And they hid the truth about my mother from me.
‘Even the old woman —’
‘Leave Gladys out of this,’ I say, my voice cold as stone. There’s so much about what Gladys did and didn’t do that I don’t understand. And now I never will. But she died for me. She cared for me so much that she sacrificed her life so I could live. I will not hear anyone, especially not my uncle, say a bad word about her. Any enemy of Gladys’s will always be an enemy of mine. ‘I will never help you.’
‘Oh, but you already have. Together we have built an army.’
My blood runs cold. ‘What?’
‘After your little accident on the horse I found what I’d been searching for. Your DNA: half human, half Fae, and containing the perfect combination of molecules to engineer a little RNA virus to recreate pycts.’
Abby was right. The pyct virus exists because of me.
‘Ironic, don’t you think?’ he says, running his finger along the tablecloth. ‘Your blood – the very reason the royal house will never truly accept you – is the foundation of my new power.’
My stomach clenches in sickness.
‘Together we have created an army that will deliver me three realms,’ he says triumphantly.
‘You’re mad. You’re both mad,’ I say, backing away from him and looking at Agent Eight, who is lapping up every word from the doorway. ‘You’ll destroy all of us.’
‘You need not worry yourself, my dear. The virus was made from your DNA, after all. You are immune. And I took the precaution of immunising myself – and those closest to me,’ he adds like an afterthought. ‘A reward for past loyalties. Our next joint venture, Francesca, is unlocking the unbridled power of the Chalice.’
‘I will not,’ I say with steely resolve.
‘Have it your way. I had hoped you’d see reason after you understood that the Order are using you, but clearly you need some more incentive.’
With lightning-fast speed, Damius is in front of me, blocking my path. He raises his hand, the amber ring swirling as though it has liquefied. As the amber gathers speed like a hurricane inside a snow globe, so too does the air around us.
My hair whips about my face.
Tables and chairs overturn and clatter to the ground.
I bend my knees and brace against the floor to stop from toppling over.
Agent Eight holds fast to the door, her shoulders hunched and head drawn in towards her collarbone. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look unsure, scared even.
Streaks of amber light burst from his ring, smashing the boards on the windows into splinters in an ear-splitting crack. I cover my head protectively, watching for signs of pain on Damius’s face. Surely a spell of this size in Volgaris would be too painful to maintain for long. And once he’s weakened from using the Art, I will strike. But there’s not a grimace of discomfort or a trickle of blood to be seen. He looks emboldened and invigorated and he doesn’t stop. A horrifying realisation dawns. He’s using my mother’s power. She is paying the price for his magic.
I run to him, to tackle him to the ground, to make him stop hurting my mother. But before I reach him he stretches his arms wide. Light slashes across the sky and I feel, then hear, an enormous boom. The force of the explosion knocks me to the ground. There’s a shrieking of twisting metal and smashing plaster overhead. A panel from the roof plummets towards me.
My wings begin to beat, levitating me off the ground and out of the way.
And then the ceiling cascades down in a deadly storm of debris.
chapter 34
Shrieking alarms pierce my skull, broken only by the squeal of emergency vehicle sirens echoing through the streets.
Dust stings my eyes and fills my throat and lungs.
I cover my mouth with my sleeve, but I still hack and cough like I’ve got a twenty-a-day habit.
I stumble to the relative safety of the doorframe as parts of the roof continue to collapse, smashing and cracking the tiles below.
Peering through the dust, I make out Agent Eight’s body pinned underneath a section of plaster cornicing. I lift it off her and check she’s breathing.
She’s alive but out cold. I roll her over on her side and leave her there.
Damius remains stock-still, unharmed and seemingly unmoved by Agent Eight’s state. Untouched by the destruction he unleashed, he stretches out his arms again, pointing them to the sky.
Through the gaping hole, where daylight is partially obscured by the plumes of dust from the destroyed roof, I can see an ominous black cloud. But it’s different from any normal cloud. Small sections of it tear off, swirling and gaseous, as they streak down to the ground.
Hundreds – no, thousands – of dark swirls, lit by a backdrop of lightning, fall to the ground. As they near the earth, they take form.
Pycts.
Wave after wave of infected Fae land in formation inside the Poynter Room, kicking up the dust and debris. And judging by the sounds of people screaming and stampeding, they’re in the surrounding building and grounds too.
More pycts thud to their landing like a war drum.
Agents run for their life, seeking escape from the ruined building. They may be familiar with Fae and the Art, but Damius’s display appears to evoke a sense of survival over duty.
Looking at the damaged building, as the dust begins to clear and the debris settles, I realise I’ve seen this before: the half-destroyed roof, the jagged edge of the collapsed wall. The smashed tiles below. It’s the very same pattern of destruction in the ruins of the Poynter Room I witnessed when first I came to Iridesca. The outlines of the ruin are unmistakable. The only difference is that everything there was overgrown with trees, flowers and moss.
The war that ravaged Trinovantum has come to London.
I was supposed to stop a war. Instead, I’ve ensured it will be replayed on a new battlefield, with higher stakes and more casualties.
Tom, Jules and Abby burst into the room, followed by General Sewell and the rumble of hooves.
Taking in the devastation, Abby’s wings bloom and Tom transes to his unicorn form. Jules remains in her two-legged form but I notice she now has two swords strapped across her back.
The pycts greet their presence with a chorus of shrieks and stomping, but they remain in place like good soldiers.
‘Fan out,’ t
he General orders as the Protectorate officers and unicorns line up against the pycts.
‘Ah, how good of you to join us,’ Damius says with a smirk. ‘Sewell, isn’t it? Haven’t you risen through the ranks? Such a shame that your career will be cut short.’
Damius has played me from the start.
He’s not only orchestrated this war, but has chosen the battlefield. The Protectorate might have had a chance in Iridesca, but in Volgaris they’ll basically be confined to hand-to-hand combat. Despite their superior skills there’s no way the Protectorate can hold out against an entire army of pycts.
I stare at the faces of the nearest pycts, wondering if I know any of them. Or if they know me.
And still they come. Swooping from the sky like a mass of tormented paratroopers, snarling and growling, they land with thud after thud after thud.
Tom, Jules and Abby are at my side.
Tom leans over, keeping one eye on the pycts. ‘We need to transfer. Now.’
‘Your Highness,’ Jules urges, ‘we are outnumbered.’
I look from Jules to Tom.
Steadying my trembling hands, I’m racking by brain for a way out of the mess that I’ve created.
I can feel General Sewell’s eyes boring into my back, ordering me to flee.
I think through my options.
Running isn’t one of them. To run is to lose. I will lose any chance we have at stopping Damius and finding my mother. I will lose the faith that Gladys put in me. And I will lose my chance to prove that I am nobody’s puppet.
The Art rallies in the pit of my stomach. It dances with delight along my veins, waiting for release. My senses sharpen, my heart is buoyed with power and hope. Just like in the train station, all it would take is one glorious spell and Damius’s pyct army would be dust.
But I can’t. They are Fae, my people, enslaved by Damius. They’re innocents. I cannot vaporise them. And just in case I was still undecided, the price of the spell flashes into my mind. Using the Art in Volgaris to take out an entire army would cost me my life.
The pycts form a thick, deep semi-circle around the room and outside, a seething mass of snarling, grunting and gnashing not-quite human forms. Their unholy stench almost overwhelms me. Some of them go down on all fours, baying at me like ferocious dogs.
