Crony throbbed all over . . . as if the flames still lapped at her. She tried to move, but couldn’t. She’d never known all-encompassing pain or how debilitating it could be.
On the other side of her sightless eyes, Luce dropped down next to her, his triumphant cries breaking into a wail. “Why?”
“That fire were enchanted, born of sun . . . nothing could’ve stopped it but purest moonlight. Ye ain’t have that, nor do I.”
“You know that’s not what I meant! What were you thinking?”
“Ye chose me o’er yer wings.” Her parched words raked from her throat like shifting ash.
“Because you’re no longer immortal, you foolish old bird. I was trying to save you, and you made it all for nothing!”
She sought him with her hand, sighing when she felt the swoop of ethereal feathers at his shoulder. “Nay. Ye made a selfless choice and the fates rewarded ye. I no longer be immortal, but ye are ageless.”
“We were both supposed to be rewarded; we went into this as partners, remember?” On the other side of the black void, she could hear him shrugging free of his jacket. Her naked body shuddered as the cloth covered her sticky and blistered hide. “Tell me how to help you.” His voice wavered, his hands running across the cloth, gentle as raindrops. A cool wind soothed her skin in their wake. He’d changed to his celestial form, no doubt fearing his corporeal touch would cause more damage.
“Go to our princess.” Her throat tightened, her breaths rattling in her chest. “See this done so she have the life she be born to.”
“You expect me just to leave?” The wind rushed over her faster now—driven by frustration. “What am I to tell her when she asks of you?”
“That it finally be dark, me dandy dog. That I remember now, what it be like to close me eyes and have oblivion. But ye wait to tell her until the prophecy be completed.”
He growled. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”
“This be the only way it can end, me doggish dandy.”
There was a strangled inhalation. “Your penalty for bringing a life back from the brink was death. You’ve known since the day Stain came into our lives . . . yet you never told me.”
“And yer ne’er to tell her neither. Not all the days of her life. Now go, or everythin’ we’ve done be for naught.”
Luce howled—the hapless cry of an animal snared by a steel trap and forced to chew off a limb. Gusts of air burst through the garden, shaking the vines and leaves all around her, stirring the dust beneath her. She didn’t have to see to know when he’d vanished; she could feel his absence in the silence. In the stillness. Even the bees stopped buzzing, chased away by the smoke. With each piercing breath, with each pound of her heart and rush of blood, her skin mourned. She wasn’t sure how she could hold on long enough, but she had to.
Around her smoldering ears, a tender chirping song erupted. Crickets.
She would’ve smiled had she any lips left. She once told herself it would be worth it all, so long as she could hear their symphony in the darkness one last time before taking her final breath. Little Stain had made that possible. “Thank ye, wee one. Ye see to yer part, and I’ll see to mine.”
The cheery chirrups comforted the witch’s heart, gave her the strength to concentrate on Thana . . . calling to the bird with her cracked, sandpaper voice.
In moments, Thana’s spine-curdling caw answered alongside a beating of wings overhead. The gentle peck of a beak prodded the jacket covering Crony’s chest. “Aye there, wretched beast.” Crony’s tongue tasted of smoke and nectar. “Call to yer mistress. Tell her I kept me hands clean. It all be done by fate. I be at death’s door. She be me eyes now. Everything must befall at the proper time.” Crony hoped Dyadia would at last open her mind and heart to her. They had unfinished business. She’d like to make peace before it ended.
The large bird nested along the crook of her neck, its downy feathers a welcome torment against her raw flesh. The crickets sang louder as Crony waited, as if they could see Lachrymosa’s final memory stretching within her skull, pressing to get out. May-let, even more, they could sense the alignment of things; very soon now, all would be as it was in that golden time before Crony stole away a sorcerer’s dying breaths and tore the world in twain.
26
Invasion, Sweet and Savage
Within Neverdark’s latticework shrine, Prince Vesper had been laid upon the dais, cradled by a cushion of moonflowers and twigs. A canopy of glassy cobwebs, attached to four wooden stakes, hung a few feet above him, sparkling in the ceremonial luminary’s starry light. Fragrant curls of cinnamon incense comforted and anchored the prince’s spirit to his inert body. Dressed in royal robes, fur-trimmed tunic, stockings, and boots, he was regal and elegant; those who kept vigil commented on how he favored his kingly father of bygone years, but only in form. For all intents and purposes, Vesper appeared dead, or rather he appeared to have never been alive to begin with.
He looked more like a tribute—a gold-gilded likeness of Nerezeth’s evening star—from his toes to the lovely bow of his upper lip. If not for the untouched flesh between his eyebrows, along his straight nose and reaching to his nostrils, forestalled from surrendering to the curse by Dyadia’s quietus thrall, there would be no hope to revive him. As it stood, hope was all Nerezeth had, and even those who had once considered him bedeviled prayed for his recovery. They could no longer deny his sacrifices, starting with that first sip of sunlight. However rash, the action was one of a monarch-in-the-making—a king who would one day love his people even more than himself.
Crowds had congregated around the shrine since the prince’s arrival—Nerezethites of all walks praying to the stars for his health. The final observance, consisting of over seventy commoners, had recently been cleared out. Now none remained in the arboretum other than two of the prince’s most trusted men—Lieutenant Cyprian and Lord Tybalt—who guarded the shrine’s entrance.
A regiment of five watched the heavy exterior door to Neverdark’s iron edifice itself, waiting outside in the snow and biting wind to usher Eldoria’s princess into the world of manufactured sunlight and astonishing botany. Her entourage had arrived at the obsidian castle some half-hour earlier, where “Lady Lyra” delighted everyone with her ability to speak—having learned to shape words and sentences with her singsong voice while in seclusion over the years. Most surprised of all was Prime Minister Albous. When he tried congratulating her in their ancient sign language, Regent Griselda quickly pulled him aside. She requested his help as she and her two daughters joined Queen Nova in the throne room to oversee the placement of Eldoria’s colors around the dais for the coronation.
In the meantime, Selena, joined by a half-dozen Nerezethite guards and Eldorian soldiers alike, escorted “Lady Lyra” to the shrine, where Madame Dyadia was to meet them shortly to awaken the prince. Once inside the arboretum, Selena and the night guards took off their heavy furs, accustomed to the balmy gardens and meadows brushed with soft violet-gold light. The Eldorian guests paused to admire the landscapes. Fragrant and colorful foliage stretched out for several leagues in every direction, interrupted only by the wooden-and-wire edifices of the jackdaw aviary and the livery where the royal birds and horses—their coats and feathers tinged with a soft purplish hue—ate, trained, and frolicked within their enclosures. In a distant pasture, Eldoria’s blood-bay stallions had been turned out to graze.
The springtime atmosphere convinced Eldoria’s princess to stay within her nightsky suit, as she claimed to be leery of the fireflies afloat overhead—fed with the same mix of pollen and sun that had cursed the prince. She had learned to play her part and play it well. Under her mother’s guidance, she’d packed her “shadow attendants” within a bag which now waited in her guest chambers. For though her goblin apparitions could pretend to shy away from light, they didn’t disappear in the sun as true shadows did.