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It wasn’t possible, and yet it was happening. The reflection was changing, as if the room the mirror faced was a long-ago place, and there was no one to tell him not to come forward and look across the years.
He had wanted—it was stupid—his mother. But she was dead, and he was unable to go back to her because he’d made a promise.
Her first instinct had been to save her brother. Will’s had been to save everyone.
The boy was still chained, and alone now, in the watery hold. He was breathing carefully, staying quiet in the dark with his head up, as if, even alone, he was trying not to show he was afraid.
“Not all that is written has passed,” said Justice, “and not all that has passed is written.”
“She can’t be dead,” said her father. Violet was taking a step forward, opening her mouth to say I’m right here, when her father said, “I need that stupid mongrel back alive.”
“Everyone who has ever helped me is dead,” said Will. “I didn’t want that to happen to you.”
“Easy. Easy, boy,” Will said, his heart feeling tight as the horse that had carried him so bravely now fought to stay with him.
“Kindness is never a mistake,” said the Elder Steward. “Somewhere in the heart it is always remembered.”
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.”
A stranger saved my life the day I learned my family planned to kill me.
You are the first true outsider to come into the Hall.” Outsider. Cyprian had called her that. He thought she was an ordinary girl brought here from London. He was wrong. She had her own connection to the old world. Just not one that she could ever tell Stewards about.
“When the past is forgotten, then it can return. Only those who remember have the chance to stave it off. For the dark is never truly gone; it only waits for the world to forget, so that it may rise again.”
It called to him as a chasm calls to one who might throw himself over, bringing him right to its edge and whispering to him to jump.
A Lion doesn’t have to fight for the Dark, she thought. And I’ll prove that.
As she had hidden her Lion self from the Stewards, would she now have to hide her Steward self from her family?
“I’m glad I know,” she said, making the decision suddenly and with stubborn pride. Better a Lion than a lamb to the slaughter.
“We both get to choose our family,” said Will. She flushed slowly. She felt suddenly, fiercely protective of him, remembering his strange determination and his loyalty. He’d come back for her when no one else had, and he was here with her now, despite the danger.
Violet had told Louisa the truth. She wouldn’t come back. She didn’t have a family, just a dream that had existed in her head.
“I was worried about you,” said Will. It made her feel warm, like she wasn’t alone. Like maybe, in that room, she hadn’t been alone after all.
Had she survived her family only to be killed by the Stewards? Justice was standing over her, his sword drawn.
🥺🥺
Her world, all her dreams, narrowed down to this cell, her false lives stripped away to show the truth: she wasn’t wanted.
the way that he had looked up at her, bruised and chained. He hadn’t expected anyone to come. Maybe no one ever had before.
She looked at him now through two sets of bars that seemed to symbolize all that separated them: different futures; different fates. He was the hero; she was the Lion who didn’t fit anywhere.
He’d never forget the moment James’s eyes had met his—the sensation of coming home, as though they knew each other.
“You needed him,” said Violet, her young voice holding steady, “so I got him.”
He didn’t know if he was doing it to protect James, or to protect the Stewards.
No one could agree to drink if they really knew the price, she thought—or would have thought, except that she could see the faces of the novitiates. Beatrix had straightened her shoulders. Emery had lifted his chin. They knew the price now. And they were deciding right before her eyes that they would drink. Just as Carver had drunk.
“You took me in,” said Violet. “You trained me.” His words to her on her first day in the Hall came back to her. “You said everyone should have someone on their side. Someone to look out for them.”
the Final Flame that has never gone out. For there will always be a light in the darkness, while a Steward lives to defend it.”
She thought he looked like Lancelot in those clothes. She liked the idea of herself as Guinevere, the two of them acting out the myth, meeting in a garden where no one else could see or hear.
“The Lady, a Lion, and the Stewards,” said Cyprian, nodding. “Now it’s a real fight.”
The last time a slaughter had taken his home from him, he’d been the one stupid with emotion, stumbling through it, making mistakes that had gotten others killed. Now he knew: Don’t grieve. Move. One foot after another, that’s how you survive.
Will led, as though by seeing everything first, he could somehow protect the others from it.
For a single disturbing moment, he and his brother seemed like one: a Steward and his shadow cast upon the wall.
We’re all that’s left. And we’re not enough.
“Devon, please, Devon, I care about y—” He didn’t want to hear what came out when Robert could only tell the truth.
YIKES
Will held out the Collar to him. It felt like holding out bread to a starving man who might snatch it and stab him for it anyway.
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.
But there was no escaping it. You could run from your enemies. You couldn’t run from yourself.
But he just saw a man, and that was chilling in its own right: that an ordinary person had done this.
“What could I take from you? What is it that you care about? Your wealth? Your lover? Your plans? What’s equal to a mother?”
“You’re right,” said Will. “It’s a boy’s revenge. Just not against you.” He picked up his own sword, shifting the hilt in his hand. “Your father was the one who ordered my mother’s death,” said Will. “That’s why I’m here to kill his son.”
He still hadn’t understood. He’d seen Will touch the armor. He’d seen him survive the Blade. But he hadn’t understood what Will had come to realize piece by piece. The truth that his mother had known when she’d died on this very spot, looking at Will with despair in her eyes. “I’m not Blood of the Lady,”
Justice had trained her to fight for the Lady. And the Lady had come to her, even if she didn’t understand how or why. Wasn’t a Lion supposed to be a protector?
She was surprised how much she wanted Cyprian to be with her. Or Will. How much she wanted someone to stand beside her, so that at the end, she wouldn’t be alone.
Simon hadn’t failed seventeen years ago when he’d killed Will’s aunt Mary. He’d succeeded. He’d brought the Dark King back that day, with the Lady’s blood. Will wasn’t a champion of the Light. He was the Dark King, reborn into this time.
Her eyes were widening as if at some vision. “Oh God. Don’t hurt them. Don’t you hurt my girls. Will, promise.”
No one who knew the truth could be trusted. He’d learned that with his mother’s hands around his neck.
Around them the torn, blackened earth marked the place where his mother had died. She was standing where his mother had stood. Everything seemed to come full circle, fate turning.
