They were alone, the captain and the sleeping prince.
The king was gone. The priests were gone. Even the queen was gone. One by one they’d peeled away, each casting a glance at Alucard that said, Sit, stay. As if he would have left. He would have gladly abandoned the maddening quiet and the smothering questions, of course, but not Rhy.
The queen had been the last to leave. For several seconds she’d stood between the bed and the doors, as if physically torn.
“Your Majesty,” he’d said. “I will keep him safe.”
Her face had changed, then, the regal mask slipping to reveal a frightened mother. “If only you could.”
“Can you?” he’d asked, and her wide brown eyes had gone to Rhy, lingering there for a long moment before at last she’d turned and fled.
Something drew his attention to the balcony. Not movement exactly, but a change in the light. When he approached the glass doors, he saw shadow spilling down the side of the palace like a train, a tail, a curtain of glossy black that shimmered, solid, smoke, solid, as it ran from the riverbank below all the way to the roof.
It had to be magic, but it had no color, no light. If it followed the warp and weft of power, he could not see the threads.
Kell had told them about Osaron, the poisonous magic from another London. But how could a magician do this? How could anyone?
“It’s a demon,” Kell had said. “A piece of living, breathing magic.”
“A piece of magic that thinks itself a man?” asked the king.
“No,” he’d answered. “A piece of magic that thinks itself a god.”
Now, staring out at the column of shadow, Alucard understood—this thing wasn’t obeying the lines of power at all. It was stitching them from nothing.
He couldn’t look away.
The floor seemed to tilt, and Alucard felt like he was tipping forward toward the glass doors and the curtain of black beyond. If he could get closer, maybe he could see the threads….
The captain lifted his hands to the balcony doors, about to push them open, when the prince shifted in his sleep. A soft groan beyond him, the subtle hitch of breath, and that was all it took to make Alucard turn back, the darkness beyond the glass momentarily forgotten as he crossed to the bed.
“Rhy,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”
A crinkle between the prince’s brows. A ghost of strain along his jaw. Small signs, but Alucard clung to them, and brushed the dark curls from Rhy’s brow, trying to brush away the image of the prince desiccating atop the royal sheets.
“Please wake up.”
His touch trailed down the prince’s sleeve, coming to rest on his hand.
Alucard had always loved Rhy’s hands, smooth palms and long fingers, meant for touching, for talking, for music.
He didn’t know if Rhy played anymore, but he had once, and when he did, he played the way he spoke a language. Fluently.
A ghost of memory behind his eyes. Nails dancing over skin.
“Play me something,” Alucard had said, and Rhy had smiled his dazzling smile, the candlelight turning his amber eyes to gold as his fingers drifted, chords flitting over shoulder, ribs, waist.
“I’d rather play you.”
Alucard threaded his fingers through the prince’s, now, relieved to find them warm, relieved again when Rhy’s hand tightened, ever so slightly, on his own. Carefully, Alucard climbed into the bed. Cautiously, he stretched himself beside the sleeping prince.
Beyond the glass, the darkness began to splinter, spread, but Alucard’s eyes were on Rhy’s chest as it rose and fell, a hundred silver threads knitting slowly, slowly back together.
IV
At last, Osaron was free.
There had been an instant on the roof—the space between a breath in and a breath out—when it felt as if the pieces of himself might scatter in the wind without flesh and bone to hold them in. But he did not scatter. Did not dissolve. Did not cease to be.
He’d grown strong over the months in that other world.
Stronger over the minutes in this one.
And he was free.
A thing so strange, so long forgotten, he hardly knew it.
How long had he sat on that throne at the center of a sleeping city, watching the pulse of his world go still, watching until even the snow stopped falling and hung suspended in the air and there was nothing left to do but sleep and wait and wait and wait and wait …
To be free.
And now.
Osaron smiled, and the river shimmered. He laughed, and the air shook. He flexed, and the world shuddered.
It welcomed him, this world.
It wanted change.
It knew, in its marrow, in its bones, that it could be more.
It whispered to him, Make, make, make.
This world burned with promise, the way his own had burned so long ago, before it went to ash. But he had been a young god then, too eager to give, to be loved.
He knew better now.
Humans did not make good rulers. They were children, servants, subjects, pets, food, fodder. They had a place, just as he had a place, and he would be the god they needed, and they would love him for it. He would show them how.
He would feed them power. Just enough to keep them bound. A taste of what could be. What they could be. And as he wove around them, through them, he would draw a measure of their strength, their magic, their potential, and it would feed him, stoke him, and they would give it freely, because he was theirs, and they were his, and together they would make something extraordinary.
I am mercy, he whispered in their ears.
I am power.
I am king.
I am god.
Kneel.
And all over the city—his new city—they were kneeling.
It was a natural thing, to kneel, a matter of gravity, of letting your weight carry you down. Most of them wanted to do it; he could feel their submission.
And those who didn’t, those who refused— Well, there was no place for them in Osaron’s kingdom.
No place for them at all.
V
“Two cheers to the wind …”
“And three to the women …”
“And four to the splendid sea.”
The last word trailed off, dissolving into the coarser sounds of glasses knocking against tables, ale splashing onto floor.
“Is that really how it goes?” asked Vasry, tipping his head back against the booth. “I thought it was wine, not wind.”
“Wouldn’t be a sea shanty without the wind,” said Tav.
“Wouldn’t be a shanty without the wine,” countered Vasry, slurring his words. Lenos didn’t know if it was for effect or because the sailor—the entire crew for that matter—was soused.
The entire crew, that was, except for Lenos. He’d never been big on the stuff (didn’t like the way it muddled everything and left him feeling ill for days), but nobody seemed to notice whether or not he actually drank, so long as he had a glass in his hand for toasting. And he always did. Lenos had a glass when the crew toasted their captain, Alucard Emery, the victor of the Essen Tasch, and had it still when they kept on toasting him every half hour or so, until they lost track.
Now that the tournament was done, most of the pennants sat soaking up ale on tabletops, and the silver-and-blue flame on Alucard’s banner was looking muddier by the round.
Their illustrious captain was long gone, probably toasting himself up at the winner’s ball. If Lenos strained, he could hear the occasional echo of fireworks over the rattle of the crowd in the Wandering Road.
There’d be a proper parade in the morning, and a final wave of celebration (and half of London still in their cups), but tonight, the palace was for the champions, the taverns for the rest.
“Any sign of Bard?” asked Tav.
Lenos looked around, scanning the crowded inn. He hadn’t seen her, not since the first round of drinks. The crew teased him for the way he was around her, mistaking his skittishness for shyness, attraction, even fear—and maybe it was fear, at least a little, but if so, it was the smart kind. Lenos feared Lila the way a rabbit feared a hound. The way a mortal feared lightning after a storm.