Within moments, Launceston had slashed his blade across another face before allowing Carpenter to drop back and impale a third Hunter upon his rapier. Blood spattered from wounds on both spies.
When Carpenter had despatched another, Will moved swiftly to the rear. A wall of snarling faces hovered before him as the predators pressed forward, sheer weight of numbers eliminating the advantage the three spies had maintained in the cramped space. Gritting his teeth, he whirled his rapier back and forth, peeling open white flesh in an arc. Bodies fell with each thrust, but the Hunters cared little about their own lives, he saw.
For a moment his vision swam with those hideous faces. As the stink of their meaty breath washed over him, he knew his time was done. Determined that he would not go down to Hell alone, he snatched one final thrust with his blade, then waited for the wave to break upon him.
Instead, he felt a hand grab his shirt and pull him back so hard his feet left the ground.
Will lay sprawled across the hard earth. Shafts of sunlight punched through a canopy of leaves rustling high overhead. Lurching to his feet, he saw it was Carpenter who had dragged him from certain death, for that moment at least. He was out of the labyrinth in a clearing in the dense forest. Grace, Jenny and Meg huddled together at the edge of the trees. Launceston waited nearby, his rapier point dripping gore.
Anger born of desperation surged inside him. Why were they not running? But then he followed their gaze, and turned to face a vast arc of Hunters, a grey army, with more still flooding out from the labyrinth. Silently, they waited, a thunderstorm about to break. All hope was gone. Now there was only time for dying.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
‘STAY YOUR GROUND. I am your queen.’ Jenny’s voice rang out across the still clearing, suddenly imperious, commanding. Holding her head high, she broke away from the others and strode out from the shadows to face the line of waiting Hunters. Will’s chest tightened. He watched the Fay, wondering if they would heed her words or fall upon her first. In their cruel white faces, their eyes looked like chunks of coal.
After a moment, he realized they were not going to attack, but nor were they retreating. ‘Jenny,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse, ‘take no risks, I beg you.’
When she turned her face towards him, he almost cried out at the sadness he saw there. She forced a smile. ‘There is no risk here, my love. They will not harm their Queen. As long as I remain their Queen, upon the soil they call their own.’
Will felt a chill run through him as the meaning of her words slowly settled on him. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘You cannot . . . I will not allow it.’
‘We were lost the moment your fellow slew Mandraxas,’ she said in a soft, desolate voice, still smiling in an attempt to soften his pain.
‘There is another way,’ he protested. ‘There must be.’
Jenny – his Jenny – shook her head, glancing back at the cold ranks of the Fay. ‘If I walk with you into the human world, I abdicate the throne and they will destroy us in an instant. All of us, doomed. If I return, at least I can ensure you leave with your life. All of you.’ Her voice rose and she looked at Grace. ‘Including my sister, whom I treasure more than life itself,’ adding so quietly he could barely hear it, ‘as I treasure you.’
‘I will not allow this sacrifice,’ Will protested, clenching a fist impotently.
‘Ah, but it is not for you to say.’ She swallowed. ‘There is more at stake here than you and I. We are as nothing compared to the devastation that would be wrought on all men by an Unseelie Court bent on avenging that which you – we – have meted out to their true Queen, and now their King.’
‘Then let all the world be damned,’ he uttered, his voice breaking. ‘If I could walk away with you, I could live with the world burning around us.’
‘No,’ she interjected quietly, ‘you could not.’
‘I would sacrifice anything for one more day with you.’
‘No,’ Jenny repeated, ‘you would not, though your heart were shattered into a thousand pieces. I saw inside you on that very first day we walked together, Will Swyfte. I know your true worth, perhaps more than any other person you call friend or lover. I see how the suffering of your last few years has formed a callus around you, but the good man within remains unchanged.’
‘You cannot return,’ Will whispered, his despair growing, ‘not now that I have found you again.’
Jenny took his blood-encrusted hand in her cool fingers. ‘And I have found you again,’ she murmured. ‘I remember everything. I feel all that I felt on that day I was stolen from you. If there was some way we could be together I would seize it with both hands. But Mandraxas’s death could unleash a hell upon earth. If I can prevent that, I will.’
‘You truly think the Fay will obey a mortal?’
‘They must. I am their Queen.’
‘And how long before you meet the same fate as Mandraxas? A dagger in the night? Poison?’ Will felt his eyes sting with tears.
‘I am no weak child. I will keep my wits about me at all times, and watch the shadows, and find allies, and plot and scheme as befits a true monarch,’ his lost love said, narrowing her eyes. When he saw the defiance in her face, Will recognized a steel he had not encountered before. ‘And I will keep heads spinning, and encourage factions and machinations and ruses so that the Unseelie Court will have no time to look out into the world of men, for they will be consumed by themselves.’
‘How long, Jenny?’ He felt hollow, numb.
She blanched, but kept a brave face. ‘As long as I can.’
‘I will not allow this,’ he cried, snatching up his rapier from where it had fallen. Anger and despair roared through him. He only had eyes for the cursed Fay, who still had their talons embedded in the one thing he valued. As he lunged towards them, Launceston and Carpenter grabbed his arms and struggled to hold him back.
‘Would you rather we all died here and now?’ the Earl whispered. ‘What good would that do?’
‘Listen to her, Will,’ Carpenter added with surprising tenderness. ‘Her heart is breaking, but she does this for a greater good. She shames us all with her strength.’
Still struggling, Will blinked away hot tears of anguish until Grace stepped in front of him and held his face in her hands. She leaned in, filling his vision and holding his attention. Tears streamed down her cheeks too. ‘No one wants Jenny home more than I,’ she whispered, ‘not even you. And it will destroy me by degrees to know she is a prisoner in this land of horrors. Though it is terrible to us both, you know in your heart that what my sister suggests is the right course. Think of the lives that will be saved, Will. Jenny is right – all of us mean nothing compared to that.’
‘And you can live with that?’ he snapped.
‘As I have for these last fifteen years. But now I know that she still lives, though we are separated by oceans, by worlds, by time itself. I know! And I will carry her in my heart for as long as I live, and never lose hope that one day we will brave the terrors of this place once more and bring her back to where she is loved and cherished. We will bring her home, I promise.’ She sucked in a deep breath to stifle a sob. ‘You must let her go, Will.’
He steadied himself, wondering how it could be that these two women were stronger than all of them. Running a hand through his hair, he nodded and moved to stand in front of Jenny. It felt as if sadness must fill every part of her, but still she smiled, for his sake, and that broke his heart. ‘It seems you have won this battle of wits,’ he said, grinning, for her sake.