“But…how? Who trained her?”
Jack looked pointedly at Stella, who was looking decidedly uncomfortable.
“She wanted to learn,” Stella said, “so I taught her. She said she didn’t want to ask you, Noah.”
Noah could do nothing but stare at Stella.
“Did you know, Ariadne?” Jack said.
“She asked me if I thought Stella would train her,” Ariadne said, “and I told her just to ask.”
“I can’t believe you would have done this, Stella,” Noah said, her voice low.
“Oh, come now, Noah,” Jack said. “Why shouldn’t Grace have been trained? She was bred for it, after all. She had the potential inside her. Did you ever offer?”
“But why not ask me?” Noah said.
“Ask her that yourself,” Jack said. “Look, I appreciate that Grace is your daughter, but she’s no child. She’s been Harry’s lover, she is a Darkwitch, she is a trained Mistress of the Labyrinth, she’s had to contend with years and years of having Catling visit her at night, she knew about the marking tonight and came to watch, and I am sure she knows what this shadow hanging over London really is. Gods know what other secrets she has tucked away.”
Now everyone was staring at Jack.
“Harry?” said Noah. “You were Grace’s lover?”
“Catling has been appearing to Grace?” said Stella—and Jack noted that as she didn’t seem to be in the least perturbed about Grace’s affair with Harry, then she obviously knew about it.
“Grace is at the centre of the puzzle,” Jack said, “and not only because of Catling’s hex. Grace is a powerful force in her own right, and—”
“To get to the centre of the puzzle—how to destroy the Troy Game—you will need to get to the centre of Grace,” finished Ariadne. She and Silvius had been exchanging amused glances throughout this series of revelations, and the pair of them were by far the most relaxed in the room.
“Grace means no harm!” Noah said, and at that moment Jack admired her more than he’d ever done. She’d just heard a series of startling secrets about her daughter, all of which Grace had kept from Noah, and Noah’s first instinct was still to protect her daughter.
“I don’t mean to intimate that she did,” Jack said, “but Grace is central to our cause. I think she holds a key that will either hand us the means by which to destroy Catling…or she will fracture us apart completely.”
“Jack—” Noah began.
“Harry has given us our lecture about unity and strengthening the land,” Jack said, addressing the entire group, “but think of this. What I have just told you about Grace represents all the fractures running through our group. Noah, you should have realised that she’d been trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, just as you should have realised she wasn’t at home tonight, but you didn’t. Harry, Grace is integral to our cause, but for hundreds of years you have chosen to keep her out of the Faerie, and have not shown her your face as the Lord of the Faerie, even when you were her lover. No one realised Catling has been shadowing Grace’s every footstep for the past three hundred years and, damn it, every one of you should have realised or at least intuited it.”
Jack paused. “I don’t know whether to regard Grace as a threat, or to sympathise with her. She kept secrets…but were they secrets meant to deceive, or were they defensive strategies?”
“And yet, Jack,” said Ariadne, “all this you learn within a week. You must be quite the charmer.”
Jack gave Ariadne a steady look. “I have open eyes,” he said.
TEN
The Savoy
Sunday, 10th September 1939
Noah walked slowly into the foyer of the residents’ private entrance of the Savoy, nodding at Robert Stacey, the concierge, as she passed his office.
As always, he gave a slight bow.
Noah felt irritated and more than a little humiliated. But overwhelmingly, she felt chastened. How had she not realised Grace had become a Mistress of the Labyrinth? How could she not have felt it?
Moreover, Catling had been spending her time making Grace’s nights a living hell.
Catling had been in their apartment, night after night?
Not only had Noah not known (and she should have done, damn it!), Grace hadn’t felt she could speak to Noah about it.
Noah felt sick to her stomach. She knew there had been distances in her relationship with Grace, but hadn’t realised their extent and strength.
She’s not a child, Jack had said to her, and Noah wondered if it was so bloody obvious that “a child” is how she’d thought of Grace all these years.
Noah stood before the lifts, slowly taking off her gloves and unbuttoning her coat, trying to put off the moment when she would have to enter the lift and face both Grace and Weyland. (And, oh, Weyland…how would he feel, knowing that the Great Marriage had been agreed?)
The fact that Grace had been Harry’s lover for a while had been, in the end, the least of Jack’s revelations. Noah could understand why a daughter might keep that from a mother who had also been the man’s lover in a previous life. She couldn’t, however, understand why Harry had so carefully kept it from her (but not from Stella, obviously).
And she hadn’t once thought, until Jack had mentioned it, why it was that Harry had never shown himself to Grace as the Lord of the Faerie.
“Perhaps we are fractured, after all,” Noah murmured, finally summoning her courage and stepping into the lift.
Three minutes later, she stood before her front door. Without hesitation, she used her key to let herself in.
Weyland was sitting on the sofa, reading Saturday’s Times. He looked tired and drawn, and Noah remembered that he’d been on warden duty all night.
She bent and kissed him, and knew instantly that anxiety and tension hovered just behind the tiredness.
“You’ve been…?” he said as Noah lifted her mouth from his.
“To Faerie Hill Manor,” she said. She tossed her coat and gloves over the back of the sofa. “I will tell you about it, for, oh, there is much to say, but I need to see Grace first. Is she in?”
He nodded.
“Do you mind?” Noah said.
“Will you come back?” he said, softly, and Noah’s heart almost broke.
“I will always come back,” she said, then bent and kissed him once more. “I won’t be long.”
“Grace?” Noah hesitated before the closed door to her daughter’s bedroom, then decided to take the slight sound she heard within as an assent to her entry.
Noah opened the door, walked inside, then closed it behind her, taking a moment to survey the bedroom, as if she was seeing it for the first time.
The room was large, as were all the rooms in the Orr apartment. When Grace had first moved in here, it had been beautifully decorated with drapes, and scatter rugs over the wooden floor, and with deep armchairs and cushions in the alcove by the window.
But now…Noah realised that over time Grace had stripped the bedroom clean of everything save that which had a purely functional nature: a bed, a single wooden chair, a wardrobe, a dressing table.
There was nothing else. Not a book, not a scatter rug, not a cushion.
Not a scarf or a frippery to be seen.
Nothing save functionality.
Why hadn’t she seen this before now, as well?
Grace was sitting on the end of her bed, watching her mother carefully. She was dressed in a plain blouse and skirt, and Noah almost wept at the sight.
Grace was so lovely…she should be dressed in silks and velvets and brocades.
She should live in a palace, and have emperors sprawl at her feet.
She should live free, not a slave to terror.
“Hello, Grace,” Noah said, and, walking over to the bed, sat down next to her daughter and gave her a kiss on her cheek.
“Jack told you,” Grace said, and Noah realised she looked nervous.
Noah looked down at her hands, which had begun to fidget in her lap. What should she say?
After a long moment—a long moment in which Noah could feel Grace physically tensing—Noah looked up, smiled as naturally as she could, and said, “I am so proud of you.”
Then, as Grace stared, Noah lifted a hand, placed it against Grace’s cheek, and leaned forward once more, this time planting a lingering kiss on Grace’s mouth.
“What a fool I am for not realising,” Noah said.
Then she rose, and left the room.
Weyland stood as Noah walked back into the room. “Noah?”
She sat down, but did not speak.
Weyland hesitated, then sank down beside her.
“Noah?”
“Jack spoke to Catling last night…and then he spoke to us.”
“You and Harry.”
Noah drew in a breath. “And Stella, Silvius and Ariadne.”
Weyland, if possible, stilled even more. Ariadne had betrayed him, had arranged his murder, in Weyland’s first life as Asterion. His loathing of her was monumental, and even though the ancient witch had been living in London for the past three hundred years, Weyland had avoided her as carefully as Ariadne had avoided him.