Page 139 of The Shadow Key

They are not, then, treading on earth any longer. They are treading on stone. Plas Helyg, at last!

‘Here!’ comes Miss Carew’s voice from the front. ‘There’s a door.’

A door? That’s not right. There was no door through the fireplace, only an open tunnel. But Linette hears the groan of hinges; a dim skein of light appears in front of her, and as the door opens wider that light floods the tunnel like a balm. She squints – it hurts her eyes – and a rush of cold fills her with ice.

‘My God,’ Henry says.

‘What?’ Linette whispers. ‘What?’ and he pulls her through. She gasps.

They are in the Cadwalladr crypt.

Linette has come here only once before. When she was a child Enaid tried to press upon her the importance of honouring the dead, but the crypt frightened her so much that she made the housekeeper promise never to take her there again. She remembers well the high windows shaped like arrow slits, the monolithic tombs carved with Celtic ropes and holy crosses, the newer one that belonged to her father, the angel that adorned the tomb’s lid like a sentinel.

Henry lets go of Linette’s hand.

‘Well done, Rowena,’ he murmurs, kissing her cheek. He strides then between the tombs, toward the large double doors of the crypt. For a split second Linette fears they will be locked, but Henry pushes his weight against them and they open with a groan, their hinges screaming with the effort of old iron over stone.

Together, they step through.

Dawn has already crept upon the forest like a welcoming blanket; the morning is fresh and filled with the scent of the woods, and in its air is the promise of summer heat. Linette breathes it in, relief washing over her like a wave …

… but then she feels a cold sharpness at her throat.

‘We must get as much distance between us and the crypt as we can,’ Henry throws over his shoulder. He is rushing across the clearing, heading toward the gully of willow trees on the other side as if they are a beacon.

‘Henry,’ Linette calls hoarsely.

‘We’ll go to Mr Dee,’ he continues, breathless with the effort of it. ‘He’s closer.’

‘Henry?’

Halfway across the clearing now. Soon he won’t hear her.

‘You can both stay there while I go to the village, get Ivor to send for help. We must—’

‘Henry!’

‘What? What is it?’

He spins around. Stares. Linette sees his reaction, sees the sequence of expressions pass his face almost too fast to name them: shock, disbelief, hurt and then a horror that turns his eyes opaque.

For at the steps of the crypt Rowena Carew has Linette pinioned in a cruel embrace, the ceremonial dagger pressed into the hollow of her throat.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Henry stares. Dismay and dread spindle down his spine like cold fingertips on his vertebrae.

‘I don’t understand.’

Rowena smiles but there is no warmth in it. The woman who stands before him now is a creature filled with malice – it exudes from her like a miasma, her face no longer beautiful but as hard and cruel as Julian’s had ever been.

‘I don’t understand,’ he says again.

‘No,’ she replies, ‘I dare say you don’t. But you will.’

Realisation dawns.

‘You were one of them.’

---