“Gwen’s not like Isadora. She was intrigued when Clara said who you were. She said she never believed your mother had killed a child, and she’d be honoured to help another Moore woman defeat the fae.”
A tiny flicker of hope surged inside me. Under the blankets, Rowan squeezed my leg.
“Okay,” I breathed. “Tell Clara to set up the meeting. And in the meantime, none of you say a word about this to Jane. I don’t want her to think Connor is in any kind of danger from us. Got it?”
Flynn saluted.
“None of this makes sense to me,” Arthur said. “We’re sure that whatever magic lingers inside your mother’s portrait was what performed the emergency baptism on us in the church. And you have that letter from your mother, where she says she knows she will die that night.Shewill die, not you, Maeve. None of it marries up with what Isadora told you.”
“I know. We’re going to the National Gallery tomorrow. Maybe Smithers’ paintings will give us some answers. If not, we’d all better find a god or a philosopher and start praying, because we’ll have ten days until the Slaugh ride and I’m all out of ideas.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MAEVE
Iwalked across parched ground, the earth beneath my feet covered with a lattice of cracks. Here and there, blackened circles and broken arrow tips denoted a battlefield stripped clean of the dead. On my left, a towering wall of tangled briar penned me in. To my right, the ground sloped up, disappearing into a violent orange sky.
My body ached with an acute sense of loss. Someone was supposed to be with me. I could still feel their fingers wrapped around my arm. I glanced behind me, but I was completely alone. I tried to call out, but when I opened my mouth, a horrid, bitter taste hit my lungs.
My stomach heaved. I doubled over in a coughing fit.
The air is poison.
Tears stung my eyes as I struggled for breath.
You have to move. Head downhill.
Crouching low and spluttering into my collar, I inched forward, heading toward the briar. Here, the air was a little easier to breathe, and I crawled along the hedge, scraping my knees raw on the bare, ruined earth and tearing long cuts in the skin on my arms when I got too close to the thorns.
When I thought I couldn’t go on any longer, the hedge opened out into a short tunnel. I peered inside, but couldn’t see the end through the tangled briar. Fresh air blew from inside the tunnel, and that was enough for me. I crawled inside, sucking in thick lungfuls of air. Goosebumps rose on my arms as the temperature dropped. After twenty feet or so, I was able to breathe enough that I could get to my feet again.
The tunnel opened out into a wide clearing, surrounded by walls of briar so high they blocked out any light from the sun. Thorns tangled over my head and snaked across the ground, snaring my bare ankles as I stepped around them.
Dark shapes rose out of the earth at the centre of the clearing. My heart leapt into my throat as I recognised them.
Six long stakes stuck up from the ground, propped at a forty-five-degree angle with the use of triangular wooden frames. Their tips pointed toward a black lump on the horizon. Over the tops of the briar, I could just make out the highest turret and the ramparts of Briarwood, broken and blackened from a recent battle.
Six lumps hung from the stakes, charred and mangled.
Six bodies.
My stomach heaved. Bile rose in my throat.
Turn away. Run.
I whirled around. There was nowhere to run. The briar had closed around me, sealing me in.
“No,” I gasped. “No, no.”
I clamped my hands over my eyes, but their broken, blackened faces were seared into my mind. Flynn, Arthur, Corbin, Rowan, Blake…Everyone I loved, tortured and mutilated, their skin burned away, revealing the muscle and tissue beneath. White, lidless eyes bulged from their faces, begging me to save them. But there was nothing I could do. It was over, they were all dead and I was completely alone.
Alone.
I lowered my hands and turned around.
Six stakes. Who was the sixth for?
The final figure waited at the end of the line, shrouded in the shadow of the briar, its features obscured by thorny vines snarled around the stake. Who else would never walk the halls of Briarwood or wrap their arms around me again? Who else had sacrificed themselves for this cause? Whose death would I carry in my heart?
