Free The Hidden Princess by Katy Moran

below.
    Joe flinched – a muscle in his jaw jumped and twitched. “Well, then, you’re a bloody idiot. She’s not coming back, Connie.”
    A kind of ragged, burning fury overtook me then. “I didn’t say she was coming back, did I? She’s dead, Joe. I know she’s dead, OK? Forget I ever said anything.”
    She’s not coming back?
What a weird thing to say. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that death isn’t the end.
    “Maybe just shut up, Connie, and stop going on about what you don’t understand? Lissy died. Deal with it.”
    I turned to him, bright hot anger welling up. “Jesus, how dare you? It’s not my fault I’ve been dreaming about her, OK? She was my sister. I just wanted to talk to someone. Forget I even said anything.” There was more I was longing to say but although I could have slapped him, I needed Joe onside. The last thing I wanted was for Mum to come running back to Hopesay early only to find I’d planned a mini festival in her absence. I turned my pounding head to one side so I was looking out of the window instead of at Joe, at his hand on the gearstick, the way he hadn’t shaved for a few days, the distracting smell of washing powder and that other indefinable faint scent, diesel and something else I couldn’t place. Infuriating.
    Please. You’ve got to help me. Move the crosses, Connie
—
    The Voice. Again.
    I shivered, tearing my gaze away from the hedgerows flashing past the van window to glance back at Joe, who was still staring at the road ahead like nothing had happened. He hadn’t heard.
I was the only one
. OK, so Mum had always told me that if we got rid of the iron crucifixes from the Reach, no one from the village would ever set foot in the house again – but all that stuff was just a load of stupid old fairy stories. None of those old stories were really true. How could they be?
    I had to let go of Lissy.
She’s not coming back
. Obsessing over her was really starting to mess with my head. I’d hallucinated in a maths class, now I was hearing a voice from my dreams in broad daylight. What if I was seriously, genuinely ill just like everyone used to think? Like, mentally ill?
    All right
,
there’s one way to prove whether all this is just your mind playing tricks on you, Connie Harker. Only one way to prove whether or not you’ve lost your grip on reality
.
    All I needed to do was wait till we got home, which wouldn’t take long judging by the way my disconcertingly attractive stepbrother was driving. Wait till we got home and move the first crucifix I could lay my hands on. What harm could it do, really? Of course nothing would happen, but at least then I’d know if I was sick in the head. Maybe it was time to get some help. And every time I closed my eyes, I saw the boy’s face: his hair blacker than coal, the cloak of white feathers and his smile – his beautiful secret smile, just for me.
    I couldn’t deny that a part of me wanted him to be real.

11
Lissy
    It is black in the lost tunnels of the Hidden – just deep and endless black, dark nothing. Iris knows her way without light, and I have no argument with that – the less likely we are to be spotted by anyone else, the better. Treason. We’re planning treason.
Murder
. The air here is moist and rank – centuries of damp leaching out of ancient bedrock. Wet gravelly soil scrunches unpleasantly beneath my bare feet. I sense Iris’s presence just ahead of me – the darkness is without end down here, but I can hear the gentle rhythm of her breathing, her footfalls just a few paces ahead of mine. I can’t help listening out, just waiting to be caught.
    At last, Iris stops. “Just here. Wait.”
    Relief washes over me, rapidly replaced by fear. There’s no sickly sweet smell of decomposition. I’d feared something rotten, but that’s obviously all over now. But what if it’s Dad? Rafe? Or even Joe? What if one of them did try to follow me after all? Judging by the way Connie has aged I must have