Page 97
He thought of the girl behind the desk at the hotel, with her bright green hair. Emerald. When they’d come downstairs to leave, she’d been kissing a guy who must have been her boyfriend, and Kit had felt a little twinge of envy, a jealousy of the ability to be so carelessly happy. But how much worse it must be for Livvy, he thought, to be always surrounded by what she could never have: life, warmth, touch. Everyone she’d ever known would grow up around her, have families, and she—she would always be fifteen.
I’m sorry, Livvy, he thought. For my part in all this. I’m sorry.
“This way!” Ty called softly, gesturing for Kit to join him. He raised the witchlight as Kit crossed the grass to him, and the glow fell over them both as if they stood under a spotlight. “I’ve figured out where most of the bigger mausoleums are. Let’s go.”
They set off down a narrow path flanked with the stalls of flower sellers. During the day, Kit imagined, people would buy bouquets to lay on graves; even now, the air smelled faintly of lilies. Beyond the stalls, Kit could see rows of graves and monuments, lining both sides of the path. As they passed them, it struck him how much they varied: Some were well-kept with bright, freshly placed flowers and statues gleaming in the moonlight, while others seemed to rot away with no one to tend to them, their stone markers cracked and overgrown with weeds.
A strange place for a test, Kit thought, but then, so had been the tower in Bruges. He wondered if he should be feeling anticipation, or even dread—he’d nearly drowned during the last test—but he didn’t; he felt a sense that this was part of his fate, somehow. That the years he’d spent safe with Jem and Tessa had been the aberration, not this.
They turned off the path into a more open space, the sound of their footsteps muffled by grass. Here the mausoleums were bigger and seemed placed at random intervals, in between statues of angels and saints. The space opened up into a wide clearing, and in the center stood the red mausoleum—Kit had thought it would be painted scarlet, but instead, it was carved from natural red marble, its walls covered in creeping green ivy.
Like most mausoleums, it resembled a small house: four walls and a roof, with a black iron gate set into the front. Kit expected the gate to be locked, but when they tried it, it swung open with only a faint rusty creak.
Inside, there was nothing at all—no coffins, no statues. Only a bare and dusty marble floor. Ty turned in a circle, raising his witchlight, letting its illumination glide over every surface.
Ty went still, his gaze fixed on a spot overhead. Kit looked up and saw that two lines were carved into the marble above the gate itself. They were in English, perhaps because that had been the language Auraline spoke in the mortal world. He read:
A bell for the elf-bolt, a bell for the throne,
A bell for the ones who walk alone.
“Another riddle,” Kit said, a bit wearily.
“Elf-bolts are arrows,” mused Ty. “Mark used to wear one around his neck.”
Something clicked into place inside Kit’s head. It felt unnerving, as if the click came from a part of himself he’d never explored. That he hadn’t known was there. As if the Heir inside him, the part he’d always resented, had been asleep but was slowly—as he traversed the path laid out for his ancestor—waking up. “The ones who walk alone are the wild fey,” he said. “The elf-bolt is Seelie. The throne is Unseelie. It’s the three parts of Faerie. The task is to reunite them.”
“Reuniting Faerie sounds like a fairly substantial job.” Ty sounded dubious.
“Symbolically,” Kit said. “They have to be reunited symbolically. With…bells?”
Perhaps the Heir in him wasn’t that awake yet.
Ty looked as if he was about to ask Kit if he was feeling all right, when Livvy called to them; she was outside, hovering slightly above the grass. “There’s a bell here,” she said, indicating the outer wall of the red mausoleum. “Under the ivy. And there’s a mausoleum over there”—she gestured—“with an arrow carved into the door.”
Kit and Ty spilled out of the mausoleum to find that Livvy was right—a silver bell hung from a hook set into the scarlet marble, half covered by ivy. Next to the bell was a small, delicate carving of a horse rearing up over the moon. The Wild Hunt. So the red mausoleum represented the wild fey, Kit thought, still a little unnerved by how easily the realizations were coming to him.
Kit turned to Livvy. “Show me the other one.”
Livvy led Kit and Ty across the grass to a nearby mausoleum with a sleek, stone door adorned with a carving of an arrow. Kit stepped toward it, inspecting the door, and indeed, there was a bell affixed above it, hidden in the stonework, faintly glimmering in the moonlight.
“And over there, across the path.” Livvy pointed at a third mausoleum, built of gray marble. “There’s a statue of a weeping angel sitting on a throne beside the door. Unseelie.”
Kit nodded and made his way toward the third mausoleum, carefully examining the intricate stonework of the statue. Running his fingers over it, he discovered a small bell hanging beneath the weeping angel’s folded wings.
“Should I ring them?” Kit called to Ty, who was watching him from the red mausoleum. Ty glanced at Livvy, and both of them nodded.
Kit reached up and rang the first bell, the chime ringing out soft and clear in the still night air.
He crossed the grass and rang the second bell. This one gave off a dark, deep chime that reverberated through the cemetery.
Finally, Kit joined Ty at the red mausoleum. Brushing aside the ivy, he found the third bell, and rang it.
It chimed weakly. Kit waited for something to happen, but nothing did. He ducked into the mausoleum, to see if there had been any change inside, but everything was as he’d last seen it.
He emerged, shaking his head. “I thought that would work.”
Ty was leaning back against the side of the mausoleum, his arms folded over his chest. “Maybe it’s something to do with the three points of the bells. Maybe they form a triangle.”