A Star Shall Fall

PART SEVEN ^{CALCINATIO Spring 1759}

The sun has come and gone, growing from a spark to a sphere of undying flame. Now it recedes into the dark once more.

And still the Dragon waits.

Impatience rages as brightly as its light. The greater brilliance of the sun briefly severed the links between the Dragon and the Earth; the eyes were gone, and even its own straining efforts could not make out the distant speck of its target. It thought, then, that it had lost its chance. When contact returned, it almost leapt down, to gorge upon the first thing it found.

Almost. Almost. But the promise of power is enough to hold it in check.

Not for much longer, though. Its instinct to destroy is too intense. If it cannot have the city, and the shadow, and the ones who banished it to the cold black sky, it will take something else instead. Grow strong once more, stronger than it ever was, until it consumes everything.

Then it will have power, and all the world besides.

Valentin Aspell seemed far more serene than he had any right to be. The treasonous Lord Keeper was sitting at his ease in a chair when the jailer unlocked the door to his cell; they had permitted him that much comfort, though there was little else in this bare stone room, beneath the Tower of London. Upon seeing Lune and her escort, he rose and sank to one elegant knee. “Your Majesty.”

The Queen stopped a little way into the room, letting Sir Peregrin and Sir Cerenel keep between her and the prisoner. Irrith was glad to remain at her side. Aspell’s eyes did no more than flicker briefly in her direction, but it was more than enough; Irrith shivered, and wished she hadn’t come. Lune needed her, though. Whatever Dr. Andrews had done, she’d been days in recovering from it; he hadn’t weakened her so much as… detached her. The effort of will had been visible, every time Lune concentrated on their words, moved her body, spoke. Irrith wondered privately—and would never ask anyone—whether it was true that too much mortal bread, even of the safe, tithed kind, could tinct a faerie, and whether Andrews had washed that from her. What human qualities Lune had taken on might be gone from her now.

She certainly did not look human as she regarded the kneeling Aspell. She let the silence grow, heartbeat by heartbeat, until Irrith herself wanted to say something just to break it; and then she said, “Tell me why I should not execute you.”

There were many answers Aspell could have made. It wasn’t Lune’s customary way; it would anger the Sanists; he held some last weapon or offer that made it wiser—or at least more useful—to keep him alive.

Instead he replied, “Because everything I have done, I have done for the good of the Onyx Hall.”

Irrith couldn’t prevent herself from making a startled and disbelieving noise. Aspell’s courtesy was too good for him to lift his head; he remained kneeling, eyes on the cold black floor of his cell. Lune waited until the sound faded before saying, “If your crimes consisted only of my abduction and intended murder for Andrews’s scheme, I might believe you. If they extended no further than to what Dame Irrith has told me, your plan to sacrifice me to the Dragon, your current involvement with the Sanist conspiracy, I might still believe you. But your guilt is older than that, Aspell. You plotted with Carline even before the Hall began to fray.” She paused, then asked, “Do you deny it?”

“No, your Grace. But I maintain my defence.”

“Putting Carline on the throne would be good for the Onyx Hall?” The question burst out of Irrith before she could stop it. Lune made no attempt to stop her. “She would have been a terrible queen! And you know it!”

Aspell hesitated. His calmness was no act, Irrith realised; this wasn’t some political game. He truly meant what he said. “Madam, with your permission, I would answer Dame Irrith’s accusation.”

Lune only moved one hand, but Aspell must have seen it, for he went on. “Carline was… not ideal, it’s true. But she had this virtue over others who might have been more suitable: she could have been controlled. So long as she had her entertainments, she would have been willing to give me free rein in the Onyx Hall.”

“And that was what you wanted, wasn’t it.”

“Not at all—not if I could have the world according to my preferences. The power I have now—had—pleased me very well. But others who might have taken the throne would have been equally flawed, and far less biddable.”

Irrith wanted to shove past Cerenel and strangle him. This is what I hate the most—forked tongues speaking treason and patriotism at the same time. All the twists, all the lies, until even the liar believes his own words. “Is that how you see your Queen? Unbiddable and flawed?”

“Yes.” The word was cold and uncompromising. “Your Grace… you have been flawed since the iron knife first entered your shoulder.”

Before the Dragon burnt her hand, before the first bit of the Onyx Hall began to crumble away. Before Irrith had ever met London’s Queen. Lune said, “And yet you served me, even though I was wounded, never to heal.”

A ripple in Aspell’s shoulders, a serpentine shrug. “At first it didn’t seem to matter. This place is an exception to many rules of faerie-kind; you could have been another. But then Lady Feidelm warned us of the comet’s return, and I foresaw a second destruction. To speak bluntly, madam—for I think I have nothing to lose by doing so—had you done as you should, you would have sought out and prepared a successor, to give the Onyx Hall a monarch who is whole. Your continuing refusal to do so, and your failure to dispose of either of the threats that imperils this realm, convinced me there was no other choice.”

“No other choice than regicide.” Irrith spat the word like the poison it was.

He lifted his head to regard her. As he said, he had nothing to lose by the discourtesy. “When it offers the one plausible chance to save the Hall—yes. With regret. Time forced my hand, you see. Dr. Andrews’s plan struck me as far more likely to succeed than my own, but he hovered at the edge of his own grave; if it were to be done, it had to be done then, without time to persuade her Majesty into cooperation.” He sighed. “I threw the dice, and failed.”

With a soul-deep chill, Irrith realised what lay beneath his calm. He has nothing to lose—not just because Lune may execute him, but because he believes this whole realm is now doomed.

And what did the Queen believe? Only Lune herself knew; the silver eyes gave nothing away. Irrith couldn’t decide which was worse: naked ambition, or this double-knotted rhetoric, laying a road that led sanely and inevitably to horrifying treason.

Aspell bowed his head once more, dismissing Irrith. “You asked, your Grace, why you should not execute me. That is the defence I offer. The preservation of the Onyx Hall requires your removal, and so I pursued it. I renounce nothing I have done, though I regret the clumsy and ineffective manner of its doing. I await your sentence.”

Irrith would have killed him, without hesitation. Yes, fae bred rarely, and yes, killing Aspell would likely obliterate his spirit forever—she didn’t care. He was a traitor, and if lopping his head off angered the Sanists, so be it; they could handle the rebellion once they’d disposed of the Dragon.

Unless it destroyed them all, in which case, no sense wasting effort on the Sanists now.

But Irrith wasn’t Lune, with her responsibilities and knowledge of politics and, perhaps, queerly human notions. If she still had them.

The Queen said, “You will face a formal trial, so that all my subjects may know that the Sanist conspiracy, in its extremity, resorted to attempted regicide. But the sentence will be mine to pronounce—and I will not kill you, Aspell.”

His shoulders trembled. This might not be mercy; there were fates less pleasant than death.

“Nor,” the Queen went on, “will I exile you, to foment trouble abroad. I think rather to return to an older way.

“Niklas von das Ticken has failed to make a functional Dragon-cage, but he assures me he can imprison an ordinary faerie, in a manner more secure—but less cruel—than the iron we used upon that beast. You, Valentin Aspell, will sleep for one hundred years, in such manner as to ensure that no one can free you before your sentence is done.”

Irrith realised the intention even as Lune said it. “By the time you wake,” the Queen said, “I expect we will have resolved this issue. Either the Onyx Hall will be whole once more, or I will no longer be its mistress. Either way, your concerns will be laid to rest.”

Aspell said nothing. What reply could he make? Thanking her would have been absurd; anything else would have been an invitation to greater harshness. For her own part, Irrith thought it as good as any other path out of this situation, and better than some. Lune had passed far harsher sentences before.

She followed the Queen out of Aspell’s cell, listening as the heavy bronze door clanged shut behind them, and shivered at the sound. Will there be an Onyx Hall waiting for him in a hundred years?

Galen was surprised to receive a message at Sothings Park, summoning him to Islington. True, he hadn’t been to see the Goodemeades in quite some time, but it hardly seemed to matter. He’d been so occupied with the refinement of the alchemical plan that he’d had little time to spare for political lessons from the brownies.

Could I have prevented Aspell’s treason, if I hadn’t been distracted? Instead of wasting his time on Andrews’s mad scheme. He would never know, and doubting did no one any good.

At least he could take a carriage. The Northwoods kept one at Sothings Park, and it was his to use as he pleased. On a sudden inspiration, he sought out Delphia, who was deep in discussion with the housekeeper, and looked more than happy to be rescued. “I must go to Islington on business, and I thought you might like to accompany me, to visit with some friends.”

He laid faint stress on that final word. It had almost become a code between them, a way of referring to the faerie court when others were around. Delphia had met the Goodemeades in the Onyx Hall, but never seen their home; she smiled at the suggestion. “Let me change into a dress suitable for visiting, and I shall.”

Let the servants think him besotted with his new wife, eager to spend absurd amounts of time in her company. Galen didn’t care. Once Delphia knew the way into Rose House, she could visit on her own.

He assisted her up into the carriage, waving the footman away, then followed her in. Delphia waited until they were rolling down the drive before she said, “The clouds are breaking up.”

So she’d noticed him looking upward. An ordinary person would still call the days cloudy; Galen heard no end of complaints from family and friends about the relentlessly gray weather. But the clouds were bunching up now, rather than forming an unbroken ceiling; sometimes there was even a patch of clear blue. Galen said, “We might have another month left. If we’re lucky.” Lune was attempting to contact the Greeks again, but Galen doubted it would do much good. Sooner or later, the clouds would fail.

Delphia fiddled with her gloves. She’d been in the Onyx Hall long enough for the fear to infect her, as it did all the rest of the court. “What will you do?”

Galen stared out the window, trying not to pay attention to the sky. “Fight. It’s all we can do, now.”

Country lanes brought them to Islington, and to the busy Angel Inn. Delphia made no comment, but only watched with interest, as Galen led her to the rosebush and spoke to it. He bowed her down the uncovered staircase, then followed her into the house below.

“Lady Delphia!” The brownies were all smiles and curtsies and offers of refreshment; in return, his wife was all admiration of their comfortable home. Gertrude in particular warmed to the compliments, and soon offered to show her guest the other rooms, leaving Galen alone with Rosamund.

The instant they were gone, the smile fell off the little hob’s face as if it had never been. “Quickly,” Rosamund said, “while Gertrude has her occupied. Oh, Galen—I fear this was not the time to bring her here.”

She gestured, and the worn carpet obediently folded itself out of the way, revealing floorboards polished by centuries of feet. “I’m sorry,” Galen said, nonplussed. He could not imagine what Rosamund might be doing. “I—I merely thought to show her your home—”

“On any other day, yes, of course. But the Queen needs to speak with you privately. Go on; I’ll find something to tell your lady wife.”

As Rosamund spoke, the worn planks of the floor flexed aside much as the carpet had, disclosing a second staircase. Galen didn’t have long to wonder at it; the brownie gestured impatiently—not to say commandingly—and so he went down, into a small chamber whose existence he’d never suspected.

The floorboards sealed above him so rapidly they almost knocked his hat off, and he heard the soft rustle of the carpet sliding back into place. A murmur of voices told him Gertrude and Delphia had returned, and then he had no thoughts for the people above, for he found others waiting below.

Lune sat with her Lady Chamberlain in front of a small hearth. “We can speak,” she said, though she kept her voice low. “This room protects the secrets of those within it.”

He followed the wave of her hand upward, and saw that a network of roots spread across the ceiling, except at the top of the staircase. Their rough surface was studded with tiny flowers—roses. The same yellow as those on the bush above. “Sub rosa,” Galen breathed, understanding. An ancient emblem of secrecy. No doubt among fae, it was more than a mere symbol.

Why had Lune called him here?

The question chilled him. They had talked of delicate matters before, and never needed any privacy greater than that afforded by the Onyx Hall and Lune’s guards. He doubted it was merely the shock of Aspell’s treason, either.

What could she possibly have to say, that required such powerful security?

It could only concern one matter. Galen made his bow out of habit, then stood gripping his hat in one hand. Lune indicated a chair left for him, but he ignored it. “We’ve lost, haven’t we. The clouds can’t be restored.”

“No,” Lune admitted. “Irrith and Ktistes have sent Il Veloce out with his pipes; he’s trying to shepherd the clouds into position so they block sight of the comet, at least. That’s all we can do. But no, Galen: we haven’t lost.”

Hope surged in his heart. The other face of the coin, which he hadn’t even let himself consider: the comet, yes, but good news instead of bad. “Then we have a plan?” Wrain and Lady Feidelm had emerged from the Calendar Room a few days before, but been closeted with the Queen ever since.

Lune nodded, serene and unreadable as he’d ever seen her. It was Amadea who betrayed concern. The Lady Chamberlain clearly didn’t know what her Queen meant—but she just as clearly feared it would be nothing good. And seeing her apprehension, Galen feared it, too.

Lune said, “It… is not a certain thing. Peregrin’s spear-knights will do what they can; it may be enough. But Wrain says, and I concur, that the Dragon’s spirit—and therefore its body—is too strong to be defeated in such fashion. Therefore we need some other position we may fall back on, should it come to pass that they fail.”

The formal cadences of her speech wound his nerves tight. She spoke this way in two circumstances, Galen realised: when she held court, and when the burden of her thoughts was so heavy as to be shared only with reluctance.

In other words, when she was afraid.

She saw him realise it, too. Their eyes met, and she discarded formality for simple, horrifying bluntness. “If we cannot kill the Dragon, then I will give myself up to it.”

“No!” Galen leapt forward, hat falling from his hand. “No, Lune, you cannot—”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what Aspell wanted!”

“And perhaps he was right.” She didn’t move from her chair, not even to stand; for once he towered over her, and it felt wrong. “A last resort. A choice between my own death, and the death of my realm—not just the Onyx Hall, but London as well. Thousands of mortals, hundreds of thousands, who for years now have dreaded a fiery death at the comet’s return, without ever knowing why. Should I stand living, when that disaster comes?”

Galen’s hands ached. He’d clenched them into fists, without any target to use them on. “What if it fails, though? What if we lose you and the Hall both?”

The peaceful acceptance in Lune’s eyes terrified him. “Then at least I will have done everything I can.”

Even unto the sacrifice of her soul, obliterated by the Dragon. Galen felt too light, as if he would drift away; his breath was coming too fast. Had his shouts carried above, or had the watchful roses kept his cries from Delphia’s ears? He wondered if the Goodemeades knew of this. They were Lune’s friends, beyond the bond of subject to sovereign; surely they could not stand by while she proposed such madness!

But they know her. Perhaps they know she won’t be dissuaded.

He shoved that thought away with almost physical force. The Lady Chamberlain, when he looked to her for help, sat white-faced and staring. Lune laid one hand on hers. “You know why you’re here, Amadea. I won’t leave the Onyx Hall without a mistress. If it comes to this pass, I’ll renounce my claim, and you must take it in my place.”

Her mouth says if; her mind says when. Amadea shook her head, little more than a tremble. Lune’s hand tightened. “You must. The court needs a Queen—a Queen, I think, and not a King, because it also needs a Prince of the Stone.” She transferred her attention to Galen once more. “She will need your help.”

He backed up a step, then another. His own head was moving, back and forth, slow denial. “No.”

“Galen, we have no choice.”

“Yes. We do. Or at least I do.” He should have been rigid with tension, but he wasn’t. His body felt loose, supple. Ready to spring. “It would be an insult to the men who have gone before me if I let you die while I still lived.”

“Galen—”

He stopped her with one hand. “No. I swear by Oak and Ash and Thorn that I will give my life before I let you die.”

An echo of his oaths, when he became Prince of the Stone. Lune’s face paled to pure white. Galen bowed to her, then went up the staircase, through the hidden opening, past the Goodemeades and Delphia, and out of Rose House, and he did not look back.

“Begging your pardon, your Majesty—you’re an idiot.”

Lune didn’t flinch at the accusation, much less protest. Irrith would have gone on even if the Onyx Guard were there with swords out to stop her. “You know what he’s like. You know he’s in love with you. And you thought he’d stand by while you put yourself in danger?”

More than just danger, but neither of them would say it directly. Not here, inside the Onyx Hall. Irrith had heard it from the Goodemeades. If she could have gone to the cells beneath the Tower and dragged Aspell out of his hundred-year-sleep, she would have spit in his face. He’s still succeeded, even after being defeated.

And Irrith herself was partly to blame. She was the real idiot. Not the Queen.

Me and Galen. We’re both too stupid to be let out without keepers.

They were alone in the chamber, with strict guard on the door outside. Lune sat with her head bowed, but in thought, not penitence. Her slender hands rested atop the pillar-and-claw table at her side, as if she were sitting for a portrait—probably some study in melancholy.

“Do you love him?”

The question rocked Irrith back on her heels. “Who? Galen?”

The Queen nodded.

“No. I don’t.”

One pale finger tapped against the table’s pearly surface. After a strange pause, during which Irrith could not begin to guess the thoughts in her head, Lune said, “You’ve been his lover, though.”

Most of the Onyx Hall probably knew, without need for royal spies. “I was. Until he got married. He means to keep faith with his wife.”

“But he doesn’t love her.” Lune shifted, leaningback in her chair, still thoughtful. It wasn’t idle thought: she was more like an owl, searching out suitable prey. “I’ve watched them closely, because I hoped he might, but no. They feel nothing more than friendship for each other. In time it might grow to love… but not soon enough.”

Irrith regretted it even as she asked, “Soon enough for what?”

The Queen’s mouth settled into a line Irrith had seen before, determination in the face of impossibility. “To save him. He might not throw his life away if he felt it would hurt another. Unfortunately, he’s done his duty by his family—their wealth is restored—and he has no children yet. I am the only one he loves, and he knows too well that I do not love him back. I would regret his passing, but not deeply enough.”

Her silver regard settled on Irrith, who suddenly felt like the mouse the owl had been waiting for. “You could make that choice.”

To love him. It was a choice, on the part of the fae; that was why they adored stories of mortal passion. The notion that love could strike without warning and sweep away all reason was alien, baffling. Fondness could happen that way, even infatuation, but not love. That required a conscious decision to give over one’s heart.

She’d wondered, ever since she met this Queen who loved a mortal man, what it would be like.

But she also knew the price.

“Tell me this,” Irrith said, crossing her arms and tucking her elbows close against her body, as if to warm the chill inside. “What Dr. Andrews did to you, that ‘cleansing.’ Did it take away the grief you feel for Michael Deven?”

The first Prince of the Stone, dead these hundred years and more. Lune said, “No.”

So even alchemy could not end the mourning of a faerie who gave her heart. Irrith shook her head. “Then no. I won’t. Even if it did stop him, I’d have at most, what—fifty years more? Sixty, if his health is very good? Then an eternity of grief. And he would hate me for having made him choose between me and you.” If it was even a choice. Just because one person loved, didn’t mean the other would. Galen’s fruitless devotion proved that.

Something finally broke through the serenity Lune had maintained all this time, ever since her rescue from Dr. Andrews’s knife. “He’ll throw his life away,” she said, helplessly. “For no better reason than to save himself from watching me die.”

Much as Lune herself proposed to do. But it wasn’t a fair comparison; she at least had some hope of appeasing the Dragon, even if only for a while.

“Stop him,” Lune said. “Please, Irrith. I cannot.”

The only way to stop him would be to find a better answer. One that didn’t end in either a dead Queen or a dead Prince, much less both.

Irrith didn’t know if such an answer existed. But it wouldn’t do any good to say that, and so she answered, “I will.”

A few awkward conversations at Royal Society meetings and the dinners beforehand did not a true acquaintance make. Galen cared little for such niceties, though—not now. As soon as he discovered Henry Cavendish’s address, he went there straightaway, and made it clear to the servants that he would not be put off. “I must see Mr. Cavendish on a matter of most urgent business. He is the only man who can help me.” I only pray that he can.

Henry lodged with his father, Lord Charles, and so the footman was accustomed to far more important visitors; he was not easily impressed. But at Galen’s insistence, he did bear word to the young master that a very determined madman was at the door.

And whether by his determination or his target’s pity, Galen won through. Soon he was shown into a small parlor, where he tried not to wear a hole in the carpet with pacing before Henry Cavendish came in. The man was as shabby as ever; Galen only prayed it would be easier to get him to speak in this more private setting. “Mr. Cavendish,” he said as he made a perfunctory bow, “I apologise for the vehemence of my approach, but I have a very great problem, and little time in which to solve it. I must beg you to tell me everything you know about phlogiston.”

Cavendish was taken aback. Whatever business he’d believed brought Galen to his door, surely it hadn’t been this. It might have been surprise more than the stammer that made him hesitate in saying, “Phlogiston? Ah, yes—” His high-pitched voice went even higher, and the next words took forever to come out. “You said you could get a sample.”

Ages ago, at dinner in the Mitre Tavern. Just before he revealed the Onyx Court to Dr. Andrews. Galen cursed his choice: what might have been achieved had he trusted this young man, instead of the mad consumptive?

Possibly nothing. It might even have been worse. It was too late, regardless; the fae would never tolerate him bringing a second philosopher among them. Not now, with the end so near at hand. Cavendish would have to work blind. “I—yes. I have. That is, I think I have,” he cautioned, as his host came alive with curiosity. “I’m not certain. But what I have is extremely dangerous, Mr. Cavendish—very destructive—and I must find a way to render it safe again, before it can do more harm.”

“Let us go, then!” All hint of a stammer had vanished, along with Cavendish’s awkward shyness; he even tried to grab Galen by the arm.

Galen pulled back. “No. My apologies, Mr. Cavendish, but—” He floundered for an excuse. “Its destructive potential is too great. I mean no offence to you, but if anyone else learned how to isolate phlogiston, before I discover a means of securing it again, the consequences could be disastrous.”

An ordinary man would have been offended; Cavendish was already lost in his own thoughts, talking to himself. “So far as we understand it, phlogiston exists in all combustible materials. When they burn, the phlogiston is released into the air. If you burn a candle in a sealed jar, in time it goes out; this, I think, is because the air has absorbed all the phlogiston it can hold.”

“How does it get into those materials in the first place?”

Cavendish shook his head. “I don’t know.” He began to pace, chewing on one knuckle in what looked like a habitual gesture. “Perhaps trees produce it as they grow?… but that does you no good; you don’t want to make more. Not yet, at any rate.”

Galen twisted his fingers together. He’d forgotten gloves, and even his walking stick; he wished desperately for something to occupy his nervous hands. “Then to break it down instead. But no—it’s elemental; it can’t be broken into other substances. What about its opposite?”

“Opposite?”

“As in alchemy. Fire was opposed by water, cold and wet instead of hot and dry. What would that be, in modern terms? Not water itself, I know that much; it must be something else, more fundamental, perhaps some quality in water, that would be antithetical to phlogiston.”

But Cavendish was already waving for him to stop. “No, no. As you said—that’s alchemy. And it doesn’t work. Phlogiston has no ‘opposite,’ not that I’m aware of; for it to have an opposite, it would have to exist within a scheme like Aristotle’s, tidy and patterned. But the world is not so.”

Not this world. Galen’s throat seemed to be closing, making it hard to swallow, cutting off his air. Only in faerie science was there such patterning, and it had pointed to the answer: Lune. The moon queen; sophic mercury. But that would kill her, and then they would face the Dragon, perfected and unstoppable.

Cavendish suddenly bounced where he stood, a stiff-legged hop that would have been comical had Galen been less desperate. “Saturating the air! If phlogiston moves from wood to air, and stops when the air is saturated, then perhaps it could be contained by material already filled to the brim with it.”

“Wood?”

The young philospher shook both hands by his head, as if warding off distraction. “Too fragile. Gold? Though how you’d get the substance inside, I’m not sure. Draw it into something lacking phlogiston, I suppose, but then you’d lose the purity. If you would let me see your sample—”

Gold. Not iron. Galen had no idea if it would work, but Cavendish had told him what he needed to know; the container had to be something saturated with fire. And the fae had gold they said was drawn from the sun itself. If anything would suffice…

“Thank you, Mr. Cavendish,” he said, the words almost tumbling over each other in his rush to get them out. “I must go, my apologies, but I’ll let you know what happens—this has given me an idea—”

With Cavendish’s protests following him, Galen fled out the door and downstairs, running to find the dwarves.

Irrith hadn’t been in the eastern parts of London for a hundred years. There was a lot more of eastern London now, and while she’d seen it from the air when she rode with the Queen on All Hallows’ Eve, going through it on foot was rather different. She passed all manner of strange people, scarcely one in five an Englishman, or so it seemed: Irish, Negroes, Lascars, and more, living cheek by jowl among the workshops that served the docks and the ships crowding the river.

She didn’t know her way around, and she didn’t know where to go, either. It took more than an hour of questioning before someone could point her to the shop of the Jew Schuyler. It was her one hint of direction: Abd ar-Rashid lived near the Dutchman who made the lenses and mirrors for the Monument, and the bowl they used to summon the clouds. No one had seen the genie since Dr. Andrews died, and so she had to find him the hard way.

The girl inside the shop listened to Irrith silently, as the sprite tried to describe the bowl; then she vanished, still without a word, through the curtain behind the counter. A moment later, a gray-haired Jew came out. “Why do you look for him?” Schuyler asked, wariness clear even through his accent.

“I need his help,” Irrith said, realizing too late that she might have sounded more sympathetic as a woman. Schuyler looked as if he expected Irrith to assault the Arab when she found him. Around here, that’s probably a fair fear. The docks were just a stone’s throw away, with all their drunken sailors.

After a moment Schuyler jerked his thumb to the side. “End of the street. There is a house with lascars in it; he lives on the top floor.”

She found the dark-skinned sailors, and the staircase that served their house. Irrith took the steps three at a time, and pounded on the door at the top.

The man who opened it didn’t look like an Arab. Nor did he seem quite like a fae; whatever Abd ar-Rashid did to disguise himself, it didn’t feel the same as an English glamour. But she knew it was an illusion, and knew it was him.

And he knew it was her—or at least a faerie. He backed up sharply. Irrith held her hands out, soothingly. “It’s me. Irrith. I’m just here to ask you something.”

The strange-looking man hesitated, but finally beckoned her in, and closed the door behind her.

“It would have been a lot easier to find you if you hadn’t vanished,” Irrith said, glancing around. The genie appeared to live in a single room, with few possessions: a narrow bed, a few cushions, a shelf of books. She supposed exotic silks were unlikely, if he was trying to live as an Englishman, or whatever he was supposed to be. His clothing wasn’t English, though it was less showy than what he normally wore.

“I know,” he said, and his voice was the same, accent and all. “That was the hope.”

She turned to face him, surprised. “You didn’t want to be found? Why?”

His illusion didn’t drop away like a glamour, either. His flesh looked like it was shifting, rippling into a different shape, and darkening as it went. It steadied into the genie’s familiar face, and a frown. “I suggested alchemy to the Prince, and to Dr. Andrews. I determined the best source for sophic mercury. I helped devise a plan for the use of that mercury. I, a foreigner, did all these things, and because of it, Dr. Andrews attempted to murder your Queen. And you ask why I wish not to be found?”

Irrith hadn’t thought of that. Neither Galen nor Lune blamed him, so far as she knew, and no one else had said anything in her hearing—but then, she hadn’t spent any time listening for it, either.

She ducked her chin, embarrassed. “How long will you hide for?”

“There is a ship leaving for Cairo in five days.”

“Cairo? Where is—” It didn’t matter where Cairo was. “You’re leaving?”

He nodded.

“What, you’re just going to run away? Better hope we can keep the clouds up for five more days; otherwise your ship may burn before you can get on it.” The floorboards creaked mightily beneath Irrith’s feet as she stamped toward him. “You’d best not hope to come back, either. Because if you run away, people really will think you had something to do with Dr. Andrews’s plan.”

The genie was at least a foot taller; he held his ground as she glared up at him. “They already do. How can I convince them otherwise?”

He wanted to. She heard it in his voice, and she believed it. Irrith’s anger melted away, and left behind something like her usual grin. “You can help me. Which is what I came for in the first place. There’s a challenge on, to see who can throw their life away more uselessly, the Queen or the Prince. I’m trying to stop them. But right now, our only other plan is to stab the Dragon with a big icy spear. We need something better.”

Abd ar-Rashid frowned thoughtfully and moved away, pulling two battered cushions from inside the chest at the foot of his bed. He gestured for Irrith to sit on one, and by the time she’d done so, a coffee urn and two bowls had appeared from nowhere. Sighing inside, she accepted one, and hoped he would get distracted before she had to drink it.

“Beyond the spear,” she said, “there are two other possible plans. One is that Galen thinks gold could be used to trap the Dragon. I don’t quite understand his argument, but it has to do with that flodgy—oh, I can never remember the word—”

“Phlogiston,” he murmured.

“Yes, that. Some philosopher Galen knows says it goes into materials that aren’t already full of it, and so if we trapped it in something already full of fire, it wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. They’re planning to use sun-gold.”

The genie’s frown deepened, and he cupped his coffee as if it held the answer. “Because gold does not calcine. It melts, though, and very easily. This trap might work for a time, yes—but not for long.”

As Irrith had feared. “Can you find a way to keep it from melting?”

“In the time we have? I doubt it very much.”

We. He wasn’t getting on that ship to Cairo, Irrith suspected. Not unless the Onyx Court was destroyed in the next five days. “The other possibility is the philosopher’s stone. Even if we had sophic mercury, though, the Queen’s afraid it would just create a Dragon nobody can destroy, that would still burn down London.”

Abd ar-Rashid jerked, and his coffee almost slopped onto the floor. “But—the philosopher’s stone is perfection. Something that brings perfection to others. Surely—”

Irrith raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to gamble London’s future on ‘surely’? Maybe the best way to perfect things is to destroy them, so something better can be built in their place.”

Alarm filled the genie’s dark eyes. “I had not thought of that.”

None of you did. That was the problem with bringing scholars together. Clever as they were, sometimes they forgot their ideas were more than pretty shapes in their minds.

He sipped his drink, frowning once more. “No, we do not want a perfect Dragon. Even supposing we had the mercury with which to make one.”

They wanted the opposite. And that gave Irrith an idea so startling, she spilled her own coffee. It scalded her hands, but she hardly noticed. “What if we went the other way?”

“What do you mean?”

“Alchemy perfects things, right?” She put down her cup before she could lose the rest of its contents. “What if you went the other way? Reverse alchemy. Use it to make something imperfect. We’ve said all along that the Dragon is too powerful to be killed. But if we can weaken it, make it vulnerable—”

It was wild speculation, and maybe complete nonsense. The genie’s eyes widened, though, and he fair floated up from the cushion on which he sat. His mind had gone elsewhere, and his body only followed. “Combine it with something that is not pure. The alchemists combined many impure things, misunderstanding their own work, and achieved no particular result—but they were working with mute substances, not things of faerie.” His gaze sharpened, as if his mind had come back from a voyage into possibility. “I do not know if it would work.”

Irrith bit her lip so hard it almost bled. “It must.” The alternative was too dreadful to think of. Lune dead, or Galen, or both. We have to try.

Galen came through the front door of his chambers and stood blankly for a moment. The hearth was cold and black; the only illumination came from a faerie light, that whisked back to its sconce when its limited awareness realised someone had entered. Beyond that, the room lay still.

Of course. Edward was at Sothings Park. Podder was dead, and the knights who guarded Galen below didn’t know he’d returned. In his absence, charms were enough to protect his chambers, while the knights prepared for battle.

He should light a fire. The Onyx Hall was a chilly place, and the gloom pressed in on him. But he was still standing there when he felt eyes upon him.

Galen turned and found Irrith in the open doorway. His heart skipped a beat at the sight of her. She’d discarded the civilised fashions of the Onyx Hall for rougher garb—perhaps what she wore in the Vale. A short tunic over hose, displaying a figure that, while slender, was not boyish. She shifted from one foot to the other, hands tugging at the hem of the tunic, and said, “I… was looking for you.”

Waiting for him, judging by how quickly she’d appeared. Galen reached the obvious conclusion. “Are you leaving?”

Startlement pulled her straight. “What? No! Is that how you think of me, as someone who runs away?”

He remembered her charging across the ice, pistol in hand, to free Lune. The marks of her exposure in the world above had largely faded now, but there was still a hollowness to her, shadows in her cheeks and along the line of her collarbone. No, she was not the sort to run away.

“I’m sorry,” Galen said, turning back toward the hearth. It was easy enough to do his servants’ work, here in this faerie palace; all it took was a whispered request, and fire bloomed in the empty grate. “I’ve been with the von das Tickens. The news isn’t good. Niklas says gold would only hold the Dragon a little while, before it melted.”

Irrith closed the door behind her. “Abd ar-Rashid said the same thing. But he suggested—well, I did, but he agreed—that we might be able to weaken the Dragon by doing the alchemical thing badly. On purpose. Combining it with something impure, to make it imperfect. And therefore vulnerable.”

Silence followed, in which Galen fancied he could hear the beating of both their hearts. The pieces hovered in his mind, not quite coming together. A vessel of sun-gold. Filled with something lacking in phlogiston, that would draw the Dragon in, as air was drawn into a vessel from which it had been pumped. Something impure, so they could enact the “chemical wedding” of the philosophers, with opposite intent.

But what thing?

“Water and earth,” Irrith said, like a schoolboy recalling his—her—lessons. “Cold and wet. It has to have no fire in it, but it also has to be flawed. Not Lune. Something that’s vulnerable.”

“Something,” Galen whispered, “that is mortal.”

Her mouth fell open by degrees, as if all the world had slowed. Irrith stood perfectly still at the edge of the carpet, not breathing. Any more than Galen was.

“Mortal,” he repeated, more strongly. “Bind the Dragon’s spirit into a vessel that can be destroyed—that can be killed. You might not even have to do anything; the mere presence of such power might annihilate the vessel, and by doing so, take the Dragon with it.” How could the words be so steady, so calm, as if he were speaking of philosophy only, with no application to life?

Irrith’s voice was not so steady. “There are plenty of stray dogs in Lo…”

She couldn’t even finish it. Galen was shaking his head. “No. It needs more than a dog.”

“Then a beggar. Plenty of those, too. Snatch one off any street corner—”

“An innocent?” he demanded. His own calm slipped. “Someone ignorant of this world, this war, tied down for the slaughter without even knowing why? I’ll be damned first! It must be someone willing, Irrith.”

His declaration hung in the air. She could make the tally as well as he could. Edward Thorne was half-faerie. Mrs. Vesey? Delphia? There were others in the Hall or associated with it, various lovers and pets of faerie courtiers, many of them with no awareness of the larger faerie world, its politics and dangers. It would be his duty as Prince to go among them, to question one after another, asking who would lay down his life for the good of London.

And perhaps one might agree. Perhaps.

But he could never bring himself to ask.

She shook her head, a tiny movement at first, then a more vehement one. “No, Galen.”

“I am willing,” he said, and if it was ragged, it was also true.

“No, no, no—” Irrith spun and crossed the room, hands in the air as if to ward off his statement, and then without warning she seized the nearest thing that came to hand and hurled it across the room. Porcelain shattered against the far wall. “No! You aren’t going to do it!”

“Yes. I am.” Peculiar joy was filling the hole inside him, driving back the fear. “Who better, Irrith? If the Prince will not sacrifice himself for the good of his people, who will? I’ll renounce my connection to the Hall—”

The firelight caught Irrith’s face, revealing fury. “Do you think this will make her love you?”

The chain of her question dragged him back to earth. “What?”

“Lune. That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? Because you love her, and you want some grand gesture to show it, saving the Onyx Court single-handed. You think she’ll finally love you, then. You’re an idiot, Galen. Her heart was given centuries ago, and not to you.”

He flinched. It struck too near the mark. He had dreamt like that, too many times, but such dreams could not survive the light of day. “No. I—I know she will never love me.”

“Then what?” Her contempt lashed out like a whip. “That when you’re gone, she’ll understand? These years you’ve been in the Hall, worshipping at her feet, laughed at by all the courtiers who have seen it a thousand times before, a poor little mortal pining for his faerie lover. But once you’re dead, oh, yes, then we’ll understand. We’ll see what your devotion was worth.

“You won’t be here to see it, though. Because you’ll be gone. Do you imagine yourself looking down from Heaven, seeing us all mourn you as you deserve?” Irrith’s eyes blazed green, burning with inhuman light. “What makes you think you’re going to Heaven at all?”

Galen’s heart pounded once, hard enough to shake his entire body, and then it stopped.

The sprite’s slender frame was rigid with emotion. The only thing moving was her breast, heaving with her shallow gasps. Then it slowed, and Irrith said, more quietly but with no less force, “I don’t know your divine Master. But I know this much: he does not love suicides. And what would you call it, when a man embraces death for love of a faerie queen?”

He had no answers. His heart was beating again, but he could not draw breath. Her questions rang in his head, the echoes multiplying instead of fading out, and all he could see was Irrith’s green eyes, shifting as no human eyes could.

And Lune’s face, the perfect portrait that had resided in his memory since he first saw her above Southwark, shining in the night sky. His goddess.

Irrith opened her mouth, as if to say something more. But no sound came out, and then she spun away and was gone, slamming the door shut behind her, leaving him alone with the silent fire.

It was not the Queen’s mourning night, but the great garden of the Onyx Hall was empty. At Lune’s request, even Ktistes had departed, leaving her alone with the trees and grass, fountains and stream, and the faerie lights blazing the image of a comet across the ceiling above.

She walked without purpose, without seeing, up one path and down another, lost in the maze of her own thoughts. In nearly one hundred and seventy years of rule, Lune had faced many challenges to the Onyx Hall and her rule over it. More than once she had thought herself at the end of that road, doomed to lose her realm, her sovereignty, or even her life. And always she had found a way to continue.

Always—until now.

The weight of the Dragon already lay upon her. She remembered that searing touch, the annihilating force of its attention. Soon she would feel it anew. The last clouds were shredding; they would not endure until the end of the month. The reports from Paris were that Messier was having difficulty sighting the comet, obscured as it was in the morning twilight, and soon he might lose it entirely; but after that it would reappear in the evening sky. They would face the Dragon whether they were ready or not.

She was not alone after all. Someone was waiting on the path ahead.

Galen.

The meticulous elegance of his apparel set off a warning bell in her mind. She’d seen such a thing before—had done it herself. He dressed with care because it was a form of armor, a way of preparing for battle.

They had not spoken to one another directly since he fled Rose House. She knew what battle he expected, and was prepared for it.

But Galen surprised her by bowing, with the same flawless care that marked his appearance. “Your Grace, I bring you good tidings. I know how to kill the Dragon.”

Kill. Not trap, or banish, or appease. End. And ensure their safety forever.

So why did the Prince not look happier?

Formality rose, unbidden, to her lips; she dismissed it. That was the game he wanted to play, and she didn’t trust it. Instead she asked directly, “How?”

“It requires a little preparation,” he said. “With your permission, Abd ar-Rashid and I will enter the Calendar Room for that purpose—though I know we can ill afford to lose eleven days. But the principle, madam, is sound.

“Much of it will be the prior plan. We will use the Monument to summon the Dragon down into the chamber in its base. This will be armored in gold, to prevent it from fleeing while an alchemical conjunction is performed. But not with sophic mercury: instead we will bind it into mortal form. If this does not immediately result in the death of that host, and therefore the death of the Dragon, then it will at least be vulnerable, as it was not before.” He bowed again. “Your Grace, I will undertake this duty myself.”

Duty. Binding. Elegant words, to blunt the raw edge of his meaning.

He still intended to die.

Galen didn’t flinch away from her gaze. He’d gotten better at lying, but not perfected the art. There was fear beneath the surface, whose existence he was doing his best not to show.

Fear held in check by certainty. The principle was sound. Every detail of their predicament was too firmly graven into Lune’s mind for her to delude herself on that front; offering herself up to the Dragon as appeasement was a weak possibility at best. Even Aspell had known that. Binding the Dragon to mortality stood a far better chance of success.

He hadn’t come here expecting argument, she realised. The armour was not for her. It was for himself, to hold the fear at bay.

She wondered if he had chosen his moment deliberately, tracking her movement through the garden until she came to this point, or whether it was pure chance that put them near the twin obelisks. Michael Deven’s grave, and the memorial to her past Princes.

All of them died eventually. Some from illness, others from misfortune; one had given his life to prepare them for the Dragon’s return. None of them could live forever.

But she hadn’t expected to lose Galen so soon.

She had not answered him. He was stiff as a pike, still where he had been when she stopped, awaiting the answer they both knew she had to give.

Before she could give it, though—“What of your family?”

It was cruel, but necessary. His calm cracked a little. “My sisters,” he said, with a hint of unsteadiness, “have been taken care of. Delphia’s jointure is provided for by our marriage settlement.”

A lawyer’s reply, which told her the answer to her real question. “You have not told her yet.”

His jaw trembled, then firmed. “No. But I will.”

Lune could not guess how the woman would take it. Delphia was too unfamiliar to her still. But the considerations of one mortal woman would not change their circumstances—nor, she suspected, Galen’s determination. He would do this come Hell itself.

And she had no reason strong enough to refuse him.

“Then make your preparations, Lord Galen,” she said formally, acknowledging him with a curtsy, Queen to Prince. “The resources of this court are at your disposal.”

“I think the one thing worse than locking myself in that room for months on end,” Cuddy said, “would be locking myself in that room for months on end to do mathematics.”

The puck’s voice echoed down the corridor as Lune approached. She hid a smile before she came through the pillars into the dwarves’ workshop. Some fae, like the von das Tickens, might have a great deal of love for craftsmanship, but none of them enjoyed mathematics. Even those mad brothers did their work by instinct, not calculation. For that, they needed a mortal.

Eleven days ago, Cuddy and the dwarves had carried stacks of books into the great clock’s chamber: instructions in algebra, elementary works on the calculus, and Newton’s great Principia Mathematica; Flamsteed’s observations from 1682; Halley’s Astronomiae cometicae synopsis, which had started their troubles to begin with. There were rumors that a French mathematician would be attempting to calculate the comet’s orbit and perihelion, but Lune and her court could not afford to wait. The Calendar Room was the only solution, and so Lord Hamilton had offered himself for this herculean task. He knew little of that branch of learning, but that was nothing sufficient study outside of time could not mend.

She’d given him her most heartfelt thanks before he went in, and would do so again when he came out. To be locked inside, alone, with only the great clock for company… Cuddy’s jest aside, even the work could not be enough to distract a man from that dread presence. She hoped Hamilton would not come stumbling out in a few moments to say he could not do it, that he’d only lasted three days and accomplished nothing at all.

The time had come to find out. Wilhas took hold of the sundial on the door and dragged the portal open.

At first she thought Hamilton’s slow, shuffling steps a sign of mere exhaustion. He could not have slept well, inside the Calendar Room. But then he came forward, into the illumination of the workshop’s faerie lights, and she saw his head. Not a wig; he’d taken none into the room. Those long, ragged locks were his own hair—and snow-white.

The Prince of the Stone lifted his head, revealing his time-worn face to the world.

Lune’s breath withered in her throat. Mortal. He is mortal. Time outside of time—we knew he wouldn’t need food, but we did not think of aging.

How long was he in there?

Hamilton extended one wrinkled hand. The papers in it trembled, until Lune took them. “Perihelion on March thirteenth, 1759,” he said, in a reed-thin voice that had spoken only to the walls for years. “The French will need more than one mathematician if they want their answer before the comet has come and gone; the work is enormous. I fear I took too long learning the calculus—it was hard to concentrate in there—”

He staggered. Everyone had been standing like stone, but now Wilhas leapt into the chamber and came back with a chair. Its cushion was worn beyond threadbare, its padding flattened until it was almost as hard as the wood. Hamilton collapsed into it with a motion that spoke of endless, horrifying habit.

Lune sank into a crouch before him, papers forgotten in her hand. A single glance had shown her the unsteady scrawl, replacing his old, meticulous writing. “Hamilton—did you not realise?”

His gaze fixed on her. With a chill she had not felt since she took the throne, Lune saw a familiar madness in his eyes. He had aged as if in the mortal world, but his mind suffered the effects of too long in a faerie realm. Or perhaps it was only the isolation, and the inevitable ticking of the clock.

“I did,” he said gently, as if speaking to a child. “But by the time I did… it was already too late to go back to my old life. Years had passed. People would wonder. So I decided to finish the work. But it was hard, and sometimes I forgot what I was doing…”

Cuddy’s feet scuffed against the floor as he shifted his weight. Hamilton glared at him. “The numbers are right, though,” the Prince insisted, with something like his old strength. “I made sure of that. Only when I had the same result three times in a row did I come out.”

Lune tasted ashes. Hamilton had not been the youngest Prince she ever chose, but even accounting for the effect of his broken health, he must have been inside for at least twenty years. Probably more. Six years her Prince, and he would not live to see a seventh. She’d feared losing a consort to the Dragon, but she’d never imagined it would happen like this.

He laid his shaking hand atop hers, where it rested on one skirt-shrouded knee. “I’ll help you look,” he promised, with sincerity that brought tears to her eyes. “There were some likely lads in the court. They’re still here, yes? They haven’t gone away?”

“No, Hamilton,” she whispered. “They haven’t gone away.”

The old Prince nodded, white hair falling in a curtain around his face. “One of them will do well, I’m sure. One of them will do very well indeed.”

The workshop was silent, the tools cleared away. Even the clocks had been allowed to run down, their hands stopped at odd hours. Most of the Onyx Court waited in the great presence chamber, filling the space before the Queen’s silver throne and the Prince’s chair of estate, gathered to hear their rulers speak. And soon enough that time would come.

Once the door to the Calendar Room opened.

The escort waited in silence: dwarves, scholars, an honour guard of knights, and three women. Irrith and Delphia St. Clair flanked Lune on either side, and none of the three met the others’ eyes. Once we divided him among us, Irrith thought, bones aching with tension. Now he belongs to none of us.

Lune was, or at least seemed, her usual self: serene as the moon, and as cool. Delphia presented a stony mask to the world. Surely she hadn’t expected to be widowed scarcely a month after marriage. It won’t end, Irrith had said to her, the night they went to rescue the Queen. He’ll always be running off, and leaving you behind. Where he ran to now, no man returned.

A hard knot lodged in her own throat, hurting every time she swallowed. Often as she reminded herself that Galen was mortal, and mortals died, the knot refused to go away. It was fury, and betrayal, and fear; and it was grief, too, which made her angriest of all. She shouldn’t have to suffer that when she hadn’t chosen to love him. He should mean nothing to her, one more broken doll, gone a bit too soon.

She knew it was a lie, though. Lune mourned all her Princes, not just the one she loved. Not as deeply, and as time passed they would fade from her mind; but any faerie who lived closely with mortals, mimicked their ways, ate their bread, felt at least a touch of loss when the close ones passed on. Next year Irrith’s grief would be forgotten.

But it hurt now, and she hated it.

The sundial began to spin. Cuddy stepped forward and grasped its angled style, throwing his slender weight backward to help drag the door open.

Only one other mortal had ever gone inside that chamber and closed the door behind him. Irrith had heard the story of Hamilton Birch in gruesome detail, since Galen went into the room; her mind had conjured up plenty of possibilities for what would emerge today.

Abd ar-Rashid stepped through the portal first. If the strain of the chamber had told upon him, he gave no sign. But he nodded to Lune, and then Galen came out.

The Prince looked almost unchanged. No lines in his face, no white in his hair. It would be easy to imagine the Calendar Room had no effect upon him—easy, until one looked in his eyes. There Irrith saw changes for which there were no words. He was older in mind, if not in body, and he’d left part of himself in the Calendar Room. Everything in him that was fire.

Galen bowed to the Queen and said, “I am ready.”

Both rigidity and nervous fidgeting were gone from his body. He stood with his hands loose at his sides, his breathing slow and measured. Like a man ready for battle—

No. There would be no battle; only surrender and death. He stood like a martyr, ready for the lions.

Lune asked quietly, “Do you wish the services of a priest?”

Irrith choked. Had Galen told her? The horrific words she’d flung at him, telling him he was damned to Hell—the Prince was shaking his head. “No,” he said, equally quiet. “I have been in meditation for days now, preparing. I must not lose this. Let us speak to the court, and be done.”

The Queen did not press the question again. Throat aching with unsaid words, Irrith followed the small procession out of the workshop, toward the great presence chamber, where Galen would be made Prince no more.

It had been done once before, Irrith knew, divesting a Prince of his title. Michael Deven gave over the position before his own death, so that “Prince of the Stone” would be an office passed from man to man, rather than a privilege belonging to him alone.

But there was no replacement waiting for Galen. Amadea had spent the past eleven days assembling a list; there were possibilities. None were gentlemen. Lune would choose from among them after this was done—if there was still an Onyx Hall left.

Galen surrendered to Lune the London Sword, the central piece of their royal regalia. She released him from his obligations as Prince, with many fine phrases. All of it was for show. Many of the watching fae knew by now about the London Stone, if not where its faerie side lay; they knew the true release would come in that hidden chamber, where Lune had once bound Galen to the keystone of their realm. Even Michael Deven had never renounced that bond. But this ceremony served its own purpose, because the enchantments of the Hall were not the only things that needed to bid the Prince farewell.

Lune faced her court and spoke, pitching her voice so it carried to the far corners of the chamber, and up into the crystal panes high above. “Once the sun sets, we will be redeemed from the threat that has haunted us since the days of Charles II. Galen St. Clair, though Prince no more, will render unto us the greatest gift any man can bestow. He will lay down his life, binding the spirit of fire to his own mortality, and in doing so will destroy it. Remember this. Remember him. Let the Onyx Hall honour his sacrifice, until the last stone falls, and the last faerie departs from England’s shores.”

The wave spread outward from the dais, fae kneeling upon the cold marble. Perfect silence followed in their wake, as if all the court held its breath. Then footsteps: uneven, two no longer walking as one. Hand in hand, Galen and the Queen descended and crossed the chamber, going out through the great bronze portal, which shut behind them with a sound like the closing of a mausoleum door.

The sun died a bloody death on the eastern horizon, staining the last remaining shreds of cloud with crimson light. London still bustled with evening activity, carters and porters and housewives exchanging familiar curses, but it was distant and muffled. Magic as strong as that used to hide the Moor Fields for Midsummer cloaked this little yard, clearing it for the use of the fae.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London dominated the space, its squat, square base ringed about with carving. Three sides bore Latin inscriptions; the fourth bore an elaborate allegory of the City’s destruction. Irrith had paced past it six times already, and hated the work more with each turn. That stiff image did not begin to describe the infernal horror of those days.

But it was easier to look at the carvings than the pillar above. The Monument soared two hundred and two feet into the darkening air, an enormous, isolated column, crowned with an urn of gilt-bronze flames. Tiny shadows moved up there: the von das Tickens, placing the lenses and mirrors Schuyler had made for this purpose. The comet, they said, haunted the southern horizon, beneath the constellation of Hydra, just on the edge of twilight. Once they arranged their equipment and opened the hatch in the urn, they would banish the few remaining clouds; and then someone would be able to look up from the bottom chamber and see the comet.

Galen would be able to look. Irrith’s gut twisted into a knot.

The spear-knights waited on the paving stones of the Monument Yard, armed and armored and protected by the tithe. Bonecruncher led a troop of goblins in support. They, like Irrith, carried guns loaded with iron shot, and knives made from leftover slivers of the jotun ice. The rest of the Onyx Guard were stationed at the entrances to the palace, in case all failed, and the beast escaped them. If Galen’s own mortality didn’t kill the Dragon, they would.

They hoped.

Irrith halted near the door into the Monument, because there was movement at the edge of the yard. The procession was a small one: just Lune, Sir Peregrin Thorne, his half-human son Edward, and Galen. No Delphia St. Clair. Irrith didn’t blame her for not coming to watch her husband die.

Galen wore only a shirt and knee breeches, stockings and shoes; no coat, no waistcoat, no wig. In the light of the lantern Edward held, the chestnut tint of his hair was stronger than ever. Irrith stared as if she would memorise it, to be recalled a century from now, and then she closed her eyes in stark refusal. No. Let it go.

The light dimmed. She opened her eyes to see Edward extinguishing the lantern, and the knights and goblins saluting. Belatedly, she did the same. Lune pressed her lips to Galen’s brow. Only that; no final words. Perhaps she’d said them below, when they were alone in the chamber of the London Stone. Or perhaps there was nothing she could say.

The former Prince hesitated. For a moment, Irrith thought he was about to speak; then she thought he was about to refuse. She froze, torn between terror and hope.

Galen spun without warning and strode toward the Monument. The others were standing a little distance away, and so they were behind him; Irrith, waiting near the door, saw his face.

Fear. The white line of his lips, the desperate set of his jaw, the tendons rising sharply from the open collar of his shirt. What Galen hid from the others, Irrith saw: the terror of a man walking to his death.

Tears obliterated her vision, and then he was gone.

He’d walked the path a thousand times in his mind.

Through the door, into the cramped space beyond. To his left, one set of stairs: barely wide enough for two people to pass, leading upward to the viewing platform and the urn of flames. To his right, a second set: rougher and narrower, leading downward into darkness.

He took the second path.

A dozen steps, then a sharp turn, then five more. Galen descended carefully; they dared send no faerie light with him, and he hadn’t thought to ask for a candle. The chamber at the bottom was stiflingly close, almost small enough to span with his arms. The ceiling curved into a shallow dome, with a round opening in the centre. By the faint light filtering in from above, Galen positioned himself beneath the opening, and looked upward.

The sun-gold sheathing the walls, marked with alchemical symbols, was invisible in the gloom. Through the opening, though, he could see the stairs, curving around and around, more than three hundred steps in total. The hatch at the top, concealed within the urn, was still closed. But soon enough the von das Tickens would open it, and then he would look through the lenses and mirrors to the comet whose return Halley had predicted more than fifty years ago.

He would see the Dragon, and the Dragon would see him.

The warmth of the sun-gold did not touch the coldness inside. Abd ar-Rashid had prepared him inside the Calendar Room: congelation, distillation, fermentation, conjunction, separation, dissolution. Alchemical processes, their order reversed, while Galen purged all things of fire from his body and spirit. There was no anger in him, no desire for action; he was an empty vessel, awaiting the annihilating light.

But fear was not a thing of fire. And so the fear remained.

Three hundred steps and more, a spiral path to Heaven. Galen stood in the darkness below. It was fitting, really. Irrith’s words had cut deeply because they were true. All of this had come about because he loved Lune. Because of her, he returned to London, following his heart instead of his duty to his family. Because of her, he searched the city high and low until he found a door to her hidden realm. He accepted the title of Prince, which he never deserved to bear; he betrayed the loyalty he owed to Delphia, in spirit if not in deed. None of it was righteous. And now he sought his own death.

I am damning myself to Hell.

No priest’s absolution could change that. No penance in advance could ameliorate the sin committed afterward, the willing suicide. The Dragon’s fire would be only a foretaste of the fires that waited for him after judgment. Irrith was right about every part of it.

Yet here he stood, beneath the Monument, hearing the metallic clang of the dwarves working high above. Because when Irrith left him, he stood in the silence of his chambers, tears wet on his face, and he thought about London, and the Onyx Court. Fae and mortals who would suffer, perhaps die, if the Dragon were not stopped. The Goodemeades and Abd ar-Rashid. Edward and Mrs. Vesey. Lady Feidelm, Wrain, Sir Peregrin Thorne. His sisters. Delphia. Irrith.

Lune.

If he refused this choice, then they all burnt. Better to die now than to let that happen.

Even if it meant going to Hell.

He accepted it, embraced it, clasped the notion to him with desperate strength, lest his nerve break and he flee. Light flooded down the shaft: the hatch was open. The gold about him began to glow, alchemical emblems glittering with cold radiance, turning the chamber into a trap, and a vessel of transformation. Galen flung his arms wide, flung his head back, stared up toward the waiting sky.

Come on. Come to me. Let us be each other’s death.

His entire body was shaking, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Tears ran down his face, and he clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached with the strain. This is it. My last moment, and I’m weeping, because I’m going to Hell—oh, God—

He could see nothing through the tears. But he felt the moment the connection formed: a terrible awareness, inhuman beyond anything the Onyx Hall contained. Vast, and distant, but filled with a malevolence that did not forget. The clouds had broken, and the comet blazed in the sky, and the Dragon saw him.

His own keening filled his ears. God, please save me, Christ, oh Christ—

Light pierced the sky, a lance from horizon to lens to mirror, downward through the pillar, and Galen screamed.

All of them flinched when the scream came. It tore into Irrith like a serrated knife, a sound no mortal throat should produce, a sound that would stay with her until the end of her immortal span.

And then it stopped.

She blinked away the ghost of that flaring light and saw the spear-knights set themselves, great pike of ice raised. No one knew for sure what would happen now. The simple fact of being bound to mortality might kill the Dragon on the spot—or flames might come pouring out the door, the pillar itself exploding into a hail of shattered stone, as the golden prison failed and the beast broke free. They had to wait, until their enemy emerged or enough time had passed that someone dared brave the interior, descending to see if Galen St. Clair was dead.

Noise from inside: the scuff of a shoe, short gasps of breath. And then Galen stumbled out the door and staggered down the two steps, falling on his knees before them.

Sir Peregrin stood with one fist raised, ready to give the signal.

Galen’s voice was a ragged thing, torn by his unbearable scream. “Where did it go?”

Irrith’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. The spear-knights were too disciplined to look away from the body they expected to be their target, but Peregrin’s gaze snapped to Lune, who stood well back, one hand pressed to her breast. The Queen wet her lips, lowered her hand, and said, “What do you mean? What happened?”

Galen shook his head. His fingers splayed hard against the paving-stone, knuckles white. “I don’t know. It came down the pillar—I felt it—then through me.” His body twisted in a half cough, half retch. “I think it went down. Into the Calendar Room.”

Which lay directly below the Monument. Horror rose like bile in Irrith’s throat. What little color was in the Queen’s face drained away. It wasn’t a proper entrance, not like the others; that opening only admitted moonlight, the ray from which the great clock’s pendulum hung. The Dragon shouldn’t have been able to escape that way.

Shouldn’t and couldn’t were two different things.

Breath drawing in a sharp gasp, Lune closed her eyes, no doubt seeking within. She shook her head. “It’s too difficult to sense from up here. The Calendar Room doesn’t exist entirely within the Hall. We have to get below. If we can trap it there—”

Peregrin was already snapping orders. The guards on the entrances, under Segraine’s command, must draw inward like a net, seeking to catch the Dragon if it escaped the Calendar Room. Cerenel and the other spear-knights set off for the Billingsgate entrance at a run.

Lune hesitated. Her eyes were open again, and they rested on Galen, still hunched on the ground before the Monument. He had one palm braced against his thigh, trying to rise, but his entire body shook with the effort.

He was no longer Prince. If Lune had to summon the power of the Onyx Hall against the Dragon, he could do nothing to help her. He couldn’t even stand, let alone fight.

Yet he was trying to rise.

Irrith stepped forward and faced the Queen. “I’ll carry him if I have to. You get below. Galen and I will find you there.”

One curt nod; that was all Lune could spare. Then she hiked up her skirts and ran.

“Can you make it to Billingsgate?” Irrith asked, alone with Galen in the Monument Yard. “Or do I have to carry you after all?”

He’d forced himself to his feet, but still stood half-bent, shoulders trembling. In the privacy of her mind, Irrith placed a wager on “carry.” But Galen shook his head. “Not Billingsgate.”

“What?”

Another wracking cough. When it ended, Galen rasped, “Have to defend from the centre. London Stone. It’s an entrance, too. Might still answer to me.”

An entrance. She shouldn’t be surprised: that was the central point, where faerie and mortal London merged into one. Galen was already staggering past the Monument’s base, stumbling like a gin-soaked beggar, but moving with speed. The mortal face of the London Stone was almost as close as Billingsgate. Irrith hurried after him, flinging a concealment over them both, so that no one would try to stop the half-dressed man and the faerie that was chasing him.

They dodged the carts and carriages, sedan chairs and people on foot that still crowded Fish Street Hill, then turned onto the lane that became Cannon Street a little farther down. Irrith could see the spire of St. Swithin’s up ahead, hard by the Stone, which lay now on the north side of the street. They were almost there when Galen’s foot caught against something in the muck and he went down again, collapsing heavily to the ground.

“Hang your pride,” Irrith muttered, and caught up to the fallen man. She could at least support him, if not carry him. Before Galen could protest, she slipped one arm under his chest and lifted him to his feet.

His skin burnt hot through the thin fabric of his shirt.

“You’re feverish,” she said, foolishly—and then she saw his eyes.

Pupil, iris, and white: all gone, replaced by blazing flame.

Instinct sent her leaping backward, an instant before his hand could close on her throat. Curses flooded through her mind, panicked and incoherent. This wasn’t the Dragon they’d fought before, the ravening, near-mindless beast, its cunning limited only to destruction. No, they’d given it a human mind, a clever one. A mind that knew all about the Onyx Hall: not just its power but its secrets, from the Calendar Room to the truth of the London Stone.

The beast that wore Galen’s body shuddered, an inhuman, spine-twisting ripple. Irrith flinched on instinct, remembering that motion from the infernal days of the Fire—

But nothing happened.

She smelled smoke, the dreadfully appealing scent of meat on the spit—but no flames leapt out at her. The blazing eyes widened. Then the Dragon, realizing its powers were limited by human flesh, did the only thing it could.

It ran for the Stone.

Irrith hurled herself after. She was the faster of the two, and knocked her quarry sprawling a second time. They narrowly missed a maid, sleepily yawning her way down the dark street. An inhuman snarl rose from Galen’s throat, and a foot slammed into her face, hard enough that Irrith saw stars. She rolled free, then forced herself to her feet once more, because a single thought survived the impact of his foot: I have to keep it from the Stone.

They were already at Abchurch Lane. Irrith snatched out one of her pistols and fired, but running spoiled her aim; her shot chipped the front of a shop. Swearing, she dragged out the other and halted for an instant, concentrating on Galen’s back.

Her second shot flew more true—but not true enough. It struck his hip, spinning him into the brick wall at his side, scarcely three paces from his goal.

Irrith was already running again. She dropped both spent pistols to the ground and drew her last weapon, the knife of jotun ice. He knocked her aside as she came near, but the blow served her purposes well enough; it threw her that last bit of distance, putting her between Galen and the London Stone.

No. It isn’t Galen. Galen died inside the Monument.

But to her horror, she saw something of him in the twisted snarl on his face. “Irrith,” he said, spitting her name like a curse. “Traitor one day, faithful the next. Can’t you change your mind one more time? For me?”

She tightened her grip on the knife. Its cold seared her hand; the Dragon kept well clear of it as he pushed himself away from the wall. His shirt was beginning to smoke, tiny flames curling up where his skin pressed against the fabric. “Odd,” she said breathlessly, trying to delay long enough for her still-spinning head to settle. The Stone was a hard presence just behind her back. If he got so much as a finger on it… “You know the things Galen knows—knew—and yet you don’t know me at all.”

He laughed, and the sound itself burnt her. “Don’t I? I know you’re a coward. You could have loved me, but you were too afraid. Not of the grief—of the possibility that your love would never be returned. That even that ultimate gift couldn’t draw me away from my hopeless devotion to Lune, and you would be left as I was, grovelling after someone forever out of your reach.”

“Don’t say that word,” Irrith snarled, past the choking knot in her throat. “I. You aren’t Galen.”

“Half of me is.”

“The body means nothing.”

“All of the body; half of the spirit. That’s what the alchemy meant, Irrith. A wedding of two separate spirits into one, cleaving unto each other like man and wife. Though in this case, the man is the wife.” The Dragon twisted Galen’s mouth into a travesty of a smile. “He welcomed the fire in like a demon lover.”

Fire that was burning his body up from the inside. They weren’t wrong; the conjunction had weakened the Dragon. Might even kill it, in time. But how long would that take?

She saw again the terror in Galen’s face, as he went to his death. Walking into Hell with his eyes wide open. Could the torments of damnation be any worse than this, his spirit shackled to a creature that would destroy those he loved?

As if it could read her thoughts, the Dragon grinned and spread Galen’s arms wide. “Do you think death will free him? We are one spirit now. Kill him, send him to Hell, and I will go with him, for I am Galen St. Clair.”

They both lunged.

The Dragon was ready for Irrith, because it knew her, as Galen had known her. One searing arm came across to block her thrust. But Galen knew weapons as a gentleman did, with rules and courtesy and honor, and he couldn’t block what he didn’t expect.

Irrith’s right hand was knocked out of line—but the knife wasn’t there anymore. Their joined momentum brought them crashing together hard, her slight weight against Galen’s searing body, and her left hand brought the blade up and into his chest.

They staggered, scant inches from the Stone. Then Irrith set her feet and drove him back, slamming his rigid frame against the brick wall behind. Elemental ice and elemental fire warred, sending waves of heat and cold radiating outward, until she wanted to scream and flee to safety. But she hung on, sinking the knife hilt-deep into his ribs, glaring into those eyes of flame, until the light in them flickered and died, leaving behind pits of black ash. When Irrith let go, the body fell limply to the ground. The knife-hilt clattered free, its blade melted away.

She stood gasping, shaking, staring at the corpse of Galen St. Clair.

His blind face seemed to stare at her in accusation. Pain twisted inside her, sharper than the vanished knife. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t love you—I couldn’t.

If she had loved him, she could never have killed him.

Slowly Irrith became aware of eyes on her. No one stood near, but mortals were watching from a safe distance, peering through shutters and half-cracked doors, whispering to each other in the shadows. From farther off she heard shouts and running footsteps: a constable, no doubt. Her concealment had fallen at some point, and now she stood over a dead man’s body, with her faerie face bared to the world.

She could not leave him there, lying in the filth of the street. Clenching her jaw, Irrith bent and took hold of Galen’s lifeless, unresisting hand. With an effort, she heaved him over her shoulder, then built another concealment for them both. It was hard, with so many people watching, but the darkness helped; she slipped away down Cannon Street, carrying the dead Prince, taking him home to rest.

Fae knew little of funerals. Those mortals who died among them were generally deposited back in the world they’d come from, in their beds or in a gutter, according to the kindness of the one who put them there. The fae did not bury their own dead. There was no need, when their bodies fell so soon to nothingness, the spirits that shaped them gone to oblivion.

The Princes of the Stone were always returned to their families, to be buried with Christian rites. Only Michael Deven lay interred in the ground of the Onyx Hall, beneath a stand of ever-blooming apple trees in the night garden, forever close to the faerie Queen who loved him.

Michael Deven—and now Galen St. Clair.

For him, the fae gathered in solemn observance, lining the path through the night garden. Or at least as close to solemnity as they could manage: some were puzzled by this semimortal ceremony, and some showed too-sharp curiosity in his death, fascinated by the experience that came among them so rarely. But knights of the Onyx Guard stood sentinel along the path, and Bonecruncher’s loyal goblins lurked behind; anyone who thought to profane the Prince’s funeral vanished instantly from view, with a minimum of fuss.

The pall-shrouded bier came through the arch, borne on a tatterfoal-drawn open carriage. Preceding it was an honour guard of five elf-knights and one half-mortal valet; Edward Thorne and his father Sir Peregrin led the way, side by side. The plaintive sound of a flute threaded through the quiet air, marking time for their slow procession. Fae knelt as they went by. The bier crossed the Walbrook, passed under the drooping branches of willow trees, and came among new mourners: the mortals of the Onyx Hall, all those who had been under Galen’s authority as Prince. They rarely gathered in one place, those mortals, and made an odd assortment standing together. Men of all classes, from the wealthy through to lawyers and artisans, labourers and the humble poor. Women, some beautiful, some scarred by disease. Old and young, and a large knot of children, lured away into a realm of wonder, their eyes wide as they watched grief go by.

At last the procession reached its end: the obelisk listing Princes of the Stone. A small flame burnt in its base, and a new line had been chiselled into the plaque:

A small group waited there. Mrs. Vesey supported Delphia St. Clair, who wore mourning sewn for her by the finest faerie seamstresses. Lune stood alone, dressed in the same white she wore every October, when she came to grieve for Michael Deven.

And Irrith, clad in green, the executioner attending the funeral.

The honour guard lifted the carriage’s burden down to the grass. Irrith stared at the pall draped over the coffin, grateful for its presence. She preferred to remember the man she’d first seen, extending his hand to the muddy, swearing sprite who had just fallen through the Newgate entrance; but every time she blinked, she saw the gaping voids of Galen’s eyes, burnt out by the Dragon. And nothing could block her ears to the memory of that searing voice, taunting her with the inexorable truth. Kill him, send him to Hell, and I will go with him, for I am Galen St. Clair.

They had saved the Onyx Hall, but nothing could rob the beast of that victory.

Galen’s family would bury a manikin disguised as their son and brother, thinking Galen the victim of some illness or misfortune. Irrith hadn’t inquired after the lie. There would be Christian rites then, but they could hardly say any here, in the heart of the Onyx Hall. Delphia had not pressed for any. She understood what this court had meant to Galen, and where he would wish to be buried.

Once the bearers folded the pall and retired into a line, Lune came forward, and laid her hand upon the grass.

They weren’t certain if she could do this, without a Prince’s aid. It might come to shovels after all, the indignity of digging a grave and piling the dirt atop the coffin. The Hall answered to Queen and Prince together, a faerie and a mortal. But either Lune could in this small way command it alone, or the palace recognised the interment of its former master, for after a few breathless moments, the bier began to sink beneath the earth. The grass closed over the coffin’s lid, and still the Queen knelt; then, at last, she let her breath out and stood.

No more ceremony than that—but Lune looked to each of them, and repeated the words she’d spoken in the great presence chamber. “Remember him.”

Irrith, hearing the Dragon’s laughter in her mind, wished she could forget.

Word came that evening, from someone’s mortal pet: a Londoner named John Bevis had sighted the comet on the night of April thirtieth.

The people of London had all but forgotten Halley’s prediction. Their fears of fiery demise had flared too soon, sparked by the false alarm of the comet two years ago; the ongoing inability of their astronomers to sight the returning comet had slain the last of their fears. It was just a star now, trailing its diminished tail, an object of astronomical curiosity and little more.

The message was brought to Lune in her privy chamber, where she sat with only the Goodemeades for company. Most of her court was above, in the Moor Fields, celebrating May Day and their release from fifty years of fear. No Sanist concern kept Lune below, not this time; she simply could not join their revelry. Not while she wore her gown of mourning white.

She thanked the usher who brought the message and dismissed him, then lapsed once more into silence.

The two brownies had kept her company before, permitting her quiet and melancholy when she needed it. If they spoke, it was because they thought it necessary. Still, that didn’t prevent a surge of resentment when Gertrude said, “You should go to them.”

Leaving aside the fact that she didn’t wish to go anywhere at all—“Them?”

“Irrith and Delphia.”

Lune passed one weary hand over her eyes. “Mrs. St. Clair will not wish to see me, I think, nor anyone of this world. Not after what we’ve done to her husband.”

“Then you haven’t come to know her very well,” Rosamund said. “She’s here, in the Onyx Hall. Right now. But if you leave her alone, then pretty soon you’ll lose her. And Irrith’s thinking of leaving for the Vale. So if you want to keep either of them in your court, you should go to them.”

The Goodemeades were the only two who could speak so bluntly to her. The two of them, and the Prince of the Stone. Galen never availed himself of that privilege, too awed by her—too worshipful—to presume such familiarity. She’d hoped that in time his awe would fade to something more comfortable.

But his time was cut too short.

“Find them,” Lune said. “We will meet in private.”

The parlour of Galen’s chambers still lay as it had days before, with chairs turned toward the hearth, a book open facedown on a table, fragments of porcelain strewn across the floor. It was easy to believe the Prince might walk through the door at any moment. Coming here was painful, but Lune thought it the right choice. There was no hiding from his ghost. Better to face it directly.

Delphia’s face showed the marks of sleeplessness and tears, though she was composed now, like a painting of grief. Irrith’s countenance was formed of something colder and more brittle: marble, perhaps, veined with flaws, that would shatter under the wrong tap of the hammer.

Lune had offered her formal condolences to Delphia before, in full view of her court; now she offered her informal sympathy. “I lack the words to tell you how grateful I am to Galen. That’s little comfort to you, I’m sure; no doubt you wish he were still alive. Or even that he’d never wed you at all, so that you’d be spared this sudden loss, and the knowledge of how it came about.”

The young widow shook her head. “The loss, yes. Galen was a good man, and I mourn his passing. But had I not wed him, I would have faced something much worse; and more, I would never have known of this world.” She hesitated. “I—I know you permitted me among you because of him. If it would be possible, though, I’d like to stay.”

It had never occurred to Lune that Delphia might think her place revoked. It occurred to Rosamund and Gertrude, though. She blessed the absent brownies for their insight. “Galen may have been the means by which you came to our attention, but that does not make you his servant, to be turned out once he is gone. You will always be welcome among us, Lady Delphia.”

The woman’s plain face flushed a delicate pink. Brushing one hand over the book that lay upon the table, she said, “Indeed, if it isn’t too presumptuous… the academy Galen suggested to you, on our wedding day. He and I had spoken of it before. I’d like to see that done.”

Faerie and mortal scholars, furthering the work Galen had begun here. Dr. Andrews was dead, and Savennis, but there were others. If Delphia would work with an Arab, Lune suspected Abd ar-Rashid would be happy to lend his aid. “Granted, and with pleasure.” It would be a more fitting memorial than a simple flame.

Through this all, Irrith had stood stiffly to one side, with none of the loose grace that characterised her usual posture. Her hands fiddled with a shard of porcelain, collected from the floor. Lune searched for the right words, that wouldn’t shatter her composure. “Irrith… I’ll understand if you wish to leave. The deed you performed on this court’s behalf is not one that people can praise, however necessary it was. But know that you, too, are always welcome here, if you wish to return.” There was no question now of punishing her for the Sanist affair, even if Lune had intended to.

The sprite nodded, saying nothing. What haunted her? It wasn’t the agony of a heart lost to death; Lune was sure of that much. Yet some shadow hung over Irrith, its claws hooked deep.

Hoping to draw the sprite out, she said gently, “Indeed, I owe you a great debt. Ask anything of me, and it will be yours.” Save the abdication of her throne—but after Valentin Aspell, Irrith would never ask it.

Unfortunately, the effect was not what she intended. The green eyes sickened, and Irrith dropped her chin. “You can’t give me what I want, your Grace.”

“Perhaps another could?” The sprite shook her head, a quick jerk with hunched shoulders. Refusal of more than just that possibility. “We’ve known each other for a century, Irrith. Whatever it is, you needn’t fear saying it in front of me.”

“Not you.” The wince that followed made it clear that had slipped out against her will.

There were only three of them in the room, and Delphia could count as well as any. With the abruptness of a woman who must force the words out of her mouth, she said, “The ladies of this court gossip, in the manner of ladies everywhere. I know you shared his bed. And I—I won’t begrudge you your grief.”

The sprite shook her head vehemently, auburn tangles whipping. “No. I didn’t love him. Not in the way that we do—not real love, the sort that hurts forever.”

But there was grief in her voice, even if it was of a transient kind. Delphia, folding her hands like one at prayer, offered up a misplaced mortal reassurance. “We may comfort ourselves that he is with—that he is in a better place now.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Not just a Christian comfort, and meaningless to fae; no, this was the hammer stroke, shattering Irrith’s mask and laying bare the horror beneath it. “No, he isn’t! He killed himself, and now he’s in Hell!”

The word rang through the room like a thunderclap—and then the air changed.

Irrith thought at first that tears were blurring her vision. And so they were; but the shape remained even when she blinked the moisture away.

It formed above the carpet, in the centre of the triangle the three of them created. White mist at first, almost too faint to see; then it thickened, solidified, colour seeping through it like slow dye, never quite attaining the vibrancy of life.

Delphia sank to the floor in shock, and Irrith almost did the same.

Those bound to the fae sometimes lingered among them after death.

The ghost of Galen St. Clair seemed puzzled at first, unsure of where he was. Then he saw Delphia on the floor; then Irrith and Lune, standing to either side. He turned from one to the other, half-drifting, and Irrith’s heart tried to burst from relief when she saw his eyes, clear of any flame.

“The Dragon,” he whispered.

She had to try three times before the word came out. “Dead. Do—do you remember?”

The question sent a shudder down his spine. Galen was dressed as he had been in death, free from all the armour of elegance, but his shirt was whole; no mark of the beast’s flame showed on him anywhere. “I… I remember pain.”

“You were burning,” Irrith said, voice wavering so badly it was almost unintelligible. “It would have killed you eventually. And maybe that would have killed the Dragon. But I—”

“Destruction.” Galen might not have heard anything she said; he was lost in the fog of his own memories. “For its own sake, at first; that was the fire of the Dragon. Then destruction for the sake of making others suffer. And that was my fire.”

His gaze pinned Irrith, swift as an arrow. “I hurt you.”

She shook her head so hard, pain flared in her neck. “No. That wasn’t you.”

“It was. The me that was the Dragon. The two of us as one…” He trailed one ghostly hand across his chest, where she had stabbed him. “The ice put out the flames. I think some part of it is still in me—I remember the comet, and the vastness of space. But there is no more fire.”

The tears were coming again. She’d done this much for him, then: that beast would not add to his torments. Scant comfort.

The ghostly substance of Galen’s body rippled, then firmed once more. Looking around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time, he said, “I thought I would be in Hell.”

Lune smiled. A strange radiance had suffused her: serenity, unshakeable as the foundations of the earth. “No, Galen. Your soul is not bound for Hell.”

“But he killed himself,” Irrith said. “Even I know where suicides go.”

Delphia pushed herself to her feet, careful as a cripple walking for the first time. She said, “I won’t quote the words of scripture directly, not in this place—but it tells us the greatest love of all is to give up one’s life for the sake of others.”

“For the sake of faeries.” The words tasted bitter in Irrith’s mouth, all the more so because she wanted to hope, and didn’t dare. “We don’t matter, in Heaven’s eyes.”

“Yes, we do.” The joy in Lune’s smile was like nothing Irrith had ever seen before. “We are not creatures of Heaven, but when love joins our two worlds, even the angels do not condemn it. I have seen it myself, long ago.”

She sounded like a madwoman. The shining certainty in her eyes, though, dissolved the ache that had lodged within Irrith’s breast since Galen first offered himself for the sacrifice. He isn’t damned. He’s given up his life—but not his soul.

Through her own dignified tears, Delphia said, “Go on, Galen. Heaven awaits you.”

He hesitated. Irrith thought some lingering fear held him back, until he shook his head.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

To leave Lune—but he said it to all three of them, his wife, his lover, and his Queen. Irrith’s throat closed, with sudden hope. “He’s a ghost,” she said, as if no one had noticed. “Haunting the palace. He doesn’t have to go anywhere, does he?”

She looked hopefully to Lune as she said it, but saw the elfin woman’s radiance dim. “Have to—no. But Galen… do not trap yourself in that fashion.”

“It isn’t a trap if I choose it,” he said, and all the passion of his soul was in those words.

Sorrow touched Lune’s lips. The fading that had come upon her, the exhaustion of the Onyx Hall’s decline, had only made her beauty more poignant. “But think of what you are choosing. For today, it would be a blessing; you would remain among those you love. What of tomorrow, though, and the next day, and all the days to come? Forever adrift in these halls, as mortals pass and faerie memory dissolves into forgetfulness, until even your friends scarcely remember who you are and why they once cared for you.”

Irrith wanted to insist it would not be so. But then she thought of past Princes—or tried to. Lord Antony, Jack Ellin, Lord Joseph. The names were there when she reached for them, and even the faces; that was not how fae forgot. When she tried to recall Jack’s sense of humour, though, or the respect she felt for Lord Joseph when he heard the news of the comet’s return… nothing. They might have been people from a history book, not men she’d known.

That would happen to Galen, too. The only way to hold on to such memories was to love. And then his lingering would be an endless source of pain to them both.

“This place would become a prison to you,” Lune said, softly, regretfully. “Do not condemn yourself to that Hell.”

His face was taut as if he would weep, but death had robbed him of all tears. “I cannot abandon this place, though. If I knew all danger had passed—the Dragon is gone, but the enchantments are still fraying. How can I leave you to face that alone?”

He couldn’t go, and he couldn’t stay. Irrith remembered the moans of the ghosts on All Hallows’ Eve—then thought of other ghosts. The ones they didn’t sweep away each year.

“Then come back,” she said.

No one understood her. Irrith fumbled for an explanation. “There’s a manor house in Berkshire that’s haunted by the ghost of some lady. Not all the time; just on the night of her wedding. I have no idea where she goes the rest of the time, but couldn’t Galen do that? Come back once a year—at least until this place is safe?” Until the desire binding him to this world faded enough for him to let go.

Lune didn’t answer immediately. She turned instead to Delphia. Any normal woman might have argued, out of confusion or piety or simple instinct, but Galen had married one who understood; she nodded. Then Lune said, “I cannot promise it will be so; that, I fear, lies beyond me. But I can leave the door open. If you wish to return, nothing here will prevent you.”

It wasn’t certainty. It was enough for Galen, though. A smile broke across his face, like dawn breaking clear after the endless months of clouds. The image spread across Irrith’s memory like a balm, blotting out the horror of Cannon Street and the black holes of his eyes, and the relief brought her almost to tears. “Good-bye—for now,” she whispered, and heard Delphia and Lune echo her with their own farewells.

And the light grew. It came from everywhere and nowhere, shining through the fading substance of Galen’s ghostly body. It should have burnt, like church bells and prayers; Irrith felt in it that same holy force, the touch of the divine. It could have burnt, if it chose. But the light passed through her without harm, shining in the depths of London’s faerie realm, and then it was gone, as if it had never been.

Irrith drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said to the Queen, “Yes. I’ll stay.”