‘Dahut, of course. The Queen of Ys, the water witch. She owes us, Rafael. We’ve kept her secret for years. I mean to call in the debt.’
With Rafael keeping her talking, Ari crept carefully forward, towards Nico’s prone body. The mask was icy cold to the touch, but it wouldn’t come away from his face. She pulled harder.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Laure warned in a sing-song voice.
The tentacles around his neck tightened abruptly and Nico’s mouth opened around the gag as he started to choke again. Behind the mask, his eyes opened wide in panic. They fixed on Ari, just for a moment, and she knew him. Nico was still in there, somewhere. He gasped for air, his hands clawing against the stones. The mask dug in tighter, his skin turning white beneath the appendages.
‘Ari, no!’ Jason pulled her away. ‘You’ll kill him. It’ll kill him.’
She fell back, looking for Rafael, but his attention was fixed on his sister in disbelief. She could hardly blame him. Laure du Lac sat like a queen beneath the carving of Dahut, and it was hard to see a difference between the two of them. But she wasn’t watching them now, or Nico. She had what she wanted. Rafael.
Together, Ari and Jason hauled Nico back into the tunnel, out of the way, out of sight. The voices of the du Lac siblings echoed around them, their argument the distraction Ari needed. Nico was what mattered now. They needed to get the mask off him. But how?
Ari helped lower him down and that was when Nico moved, and his hands closed on her arms in a bruising grip. His eyes gleamed beneath the mask, so full of pain and fear she hardly recognised the gentle man she knew and loved like a brother.
‘What has she done to him?’ said Jason. ‘How do we stop it?’ He sounded so desperate, his words sharp with grief.
At the sound of his voice, Nico’s hands relaxed a fraction and he looked back at him, like a flower seeking sunlight.
‘Keep talking to him, Jason,’ she said, struggling free. Jason’s voice was what Nico needed. Jason was what he needed.
‘Nico,’ Jason whispered, his voice hoarse. He swallowed painfully and took her place, bringing his hands up to take Nico’s. Slowly, he pulled him up into his arms, wrapped him in an embrace. ‘Nico, please talk to me. Just talk to me. Please.’
Nico gasped something, tried to speak, and the mask twisted into a smile, the porcelain around the eyes crinkling, the cheeks drawing up into a grin, the brow, alive with glee, a monster.
It wasn’t Nico’s smile. It was nothing like him. This wasn’t going to work.
‘Nico, please,’ Ari said. ‘You have to fight it. You can fight it. I know you can.’
His fingers tightened on her brother’s, the knuckles white, and his mouth opened in a silent grimace of pain. The gasps were sharper, more desperate. He was running out of time.
‘What do we do? We can’t leave him like this,’ Jason gasped.
She wracked her brains, every one of the notes and stories and things that Simon had written down in his notebook, anything. The books, the maps, the sketches, the diary entries. Fabien and Tristan, who had somehow overcome all of this with…
The one thing Dahut wanted was true love. It was the only thing she wanted. It was her mask. Ankou had given it to her. It showed her true love.
‘Tell him the truth, Nico,’ she whispered urgently. ‘You have to tell him the truth.’
Jason didn’t get it. He never did. ‘What truth… Ari, I—’
Oh, but he knew. Of course he knew. She could see it written all over his face.
Nico shook his head, despair and pain making the movement wild and uncontrolled.
‘Nico, you have to tell him the truth. And let him tell you. Now. Jason, tell him how you feel.’
Her brother frowned. ‘He knows how I feel…’ His voice was gruff and shuttered and he looked away from her. Right at Nico. ‘You know how I feel. Talk to me.’
‘How?’ Nico spat the word out, barely recognisable as a word. He had almost no breath left to him. But as he spoke, the tentacles gagging him withdrew, curling back against the body of the mask. Some little part of the pressure loosened. His voice was broken, hopeless. ‘How would I know? I’ve loved you for years. Always you. But I… How did you know?’
Jason’s face crumpled in dismay. ‘In a thousand things, little things. But I didn’t want to wreck everything, our friendship… Nico, you have to know.’
‘You flirt…you string me alone…like everyone else…you…’ And the mask’s grip tightened again, his voice dying, his eyes welling up with burning tears.
Jason glanced at her and then she was forgotten. He grabbed Nico’s face and kissed him.
A sound like a crack of thunder filled the chamber. It echoed back and forth, reverberating through stone and air. The rocks shook, the water of the pool boiled and a rain of dust fell down on them.
