The Conqueror

She nodded stiffly. “Of course.”

Alex glanced at her. “My lady,” he said coldly, and turned away.

She let her wobbly legs lower her down to rest against the embrasure as Griffyn and Alex hurried down the stairs, wondering whether she ought to feel abandoned, or rescued.

And wondering what they had found. That they did not want her to see.

They stared at the small chest almost reverently.

“You found it among your things?”

“Among yours, Pagan,” Alex replied. They were speaking very quietly. “Hervé took it from Noir when you were captured last September, after you dropped Guinevere at the Abbey. Hervé carried it to Normandy, gave it to Edmund your squire to pack with your other things. I did not think about it even once. But when Lady Guinevere just mentioned her father’s letter, and a chest….”

Griffyn did not need him to finish. ’Twas clear what he’d thought: this was the chest of the Hallows. For certes it would hold the third and final puzzle key. Where else would Ionnes de l’Ami have laid such a precious thing but in the revered chest itself?

Griffyn stared at it hard. For weeks now he’d been making his rounds of the castle, looking without knowing what he was looking for. Each day the search took more hours than the day before, and more of his attention. It was bordering, if he admitted it, on obsession.

And now, here was this little chest. It sat on the centre of the table. Small, easily hidden, highly alluring. Like a siren on the rocks. It may as well have had a heartbeat.

This must be it.

He and Alex looked at each other over the top of it. Then Griffyn pulled it to him. He ran his fingers over the iron latch. It fell open.

“It’s not locked,” he said in a flat voice. “Wouldn’t such a thing be locked?”

His sight seemed clarified, making everything rich and vibrant, with sharp edges. The rest of the room, anything outside his direct line of attention, faded to white nothingness. The world was channeled through a parchment-thin funnel, the chest sitting at its vortex.

His heart beat strong in his chest, fast and loud as he lifted the curving lid. Alex sighed. It rode up on well-oiled hinges, no sign of age. Griffyn peered inside.

Papers. What looked to be yards of scrolled parchments, some with wax seals still half-attached, like teeth hanging by a sinew, about to fall out. Otherwise, there was not much: a tarnished ring, a scrap of linen, what looked like a short knife hilt, a handful of coins, a few other trinkets. But mostly, letters.

Just a box of letters. Like Guinevere had said.

No third key.

This wasn’t the Hallows chest.

Something akin to rage welled up in him. It felt like all the emotions he’d ever eaten were pouring back up again. He took a deep breath to push them back down. More proof that, when it came to the treasure, men could not trust themselves. What they wanted overrode every other thing, including the truth. Griffyn had been certain this was the Hallows chest. But it wasn’t.

Alex reached past him and pushed the letters roughly aside, jettisoning all the items in the chest onto the table. No keys came out, though, and Alex flung himself away from the table with a curse.

“Goddammit!”

Griffyn took another breath to slow the hammering of his heart. His palms rested deceptively still on his thighs while Alex stalked to the window and cursed again, more quietly. Then he turned.

“That isn’t it,” he said in a thick voice. “That isn’t the chest.”

Griffyn didn’t know what to feel. Thwarted, relieved, enraged: they all were swimming too close to the surface. His heart was still beating too fast, the awful hope had brushed too close.

“You’ve never seen the Hallows chest, have you, Alex?” he asked.

Alex shook his head. “Nay. The Heirs receive it at their initiation, when they become true Guardians. Each has a Watcher witness to the ceremony.”

Griffyn glanced over then. Purple-grey light streamed in through the unshuttered window. So did cold evening air. Alex stood by an unlit brazier, his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the table where the chest sat.

“So I’ve kept that from you as well, Alex?” Griffyn said. “By my refusing my destiny all these years, you’ve never seen the Hallows chest.”

Something flashed in the gaze Alex lifted to his, but Alex only shook his head. “Your father would not let you be Trained, Griffyn. ’Twasn’t your doing. You would have been given the chest, but he stopped you from receiving the Training, just after we left England.”