Rhy had shown him a dozen ways in and out; hidden doors and secret halls, a curtain pulled aside to reveal a stairwell, a door set flush with the wall. All the ways a friend could sneak into a room, or a lover into a bed.
The first time Alucard had snuck into the palace, he’d been so turned around he’d nearly walked in on Kell instead. He would have, if the Antari had actually been in his rooms, but the chamber was empty, the candlelight dancing over a bed still made, and Alucard had shuddered and slipped back the way he’d come, and fallen into Rhy’s arms several minutes later, laughing with relief until the prince pressed a palm over his mouth.
Now he raked his mind, trying to remember the nearest escape. If the doors had been made by—or cloaked with—magic, he’d have seen the threads, but the palace portals were simple, wood and stone and tapestry, forcing him to find his way by touch and memory instead of sight.
A hidden door led from the first floor down into the undercarriage of the palace. Six pillars held the massive structure up, solid bases from which the ethereal arch of the Maresh residence vaulted up against the sky. Six pillars of hollowed rock with a network of tunnels where they met the palace floor.
It was simply a matter of remembering which one to take.
He descended into what he thought was the old sanctuary, and found it converted into a kind of training chamber. The concentric circles of a meditation ring were still set into the floor, but the surfaces bore the scorches and stains befitting a sparring hall.
A lone torch with its enchanted white fire cast the space in shades of grey, and in the colorless haze, Alucard saw weapons scattered on one table and elements on another, bowls of water and sand, shards of stone. Amid them all, a small white flower was growing in a bowl of earth, its leaves spilling over the sides of the pot, a tame thing gone wild.
Alucard took the stairwell on the opposite side of the room, pausing only when he reached the door at the top. Such a thin line, he thought, between inside and out, safe and exposed. But his family, his crew, waited on the other side. He touched the wood, summoning his strength, and the door opened with a groan onto darkness.
Darkness, and before it, a web of light.
Alucard hesitated, face to face with the fabric of the priests’ protection spell. It looked like spider silk, but when he passed through, the veil didn’t tear; it simply shuddered, and settled back into shape.
Alucard stepped forward into the fog, half expecting it to fold around him. And yet, the shadows wicked off his coat, washed up against his boots and sleeves and collar only to fall away, rebuffed. Retreating with every step, but not far, never far.
His forehead itched, and he remembered Lila’s touch, the streak of blood, now dry, across his brow.
It was a thin protection, the shadows trying again and again to find their way in.
How long would it last?
He pulled his jacket close and quickened his pace.
Osaron’s magic was everywhere, but instead of the threads of spellwork, Alucard saw only heavy shadow, charcoal streaked across the city, the stark absence of light like spots across his vision. The darkness moved around him, every shadow swaying, dipping, and rolling the way a room did after too many drinks, and woven through it all, the colliding scents of wood fire and spring blossom, snowmelt and poppy, pipe smoke and summer wine. At turns sickly sweet and bitter, and all of it dizzying.
The city was something out of a dream.
London had always been made of sound as much as magic, the music drifting on the air, the singing glass and laughing crowds, the carriages and the bustle of the market.
The sounds he heard now were all wrong.
The wind was up, and on it he heard the hooves of guards on horseback, the clank of metal and the multitude of ghostly voices, an echo of words that all broke down before they reached him, forming a terrible music. Voices, or maybe one voice repeating, looping over and under itself until it seemed like a chorus, the words just out of reach. It was a world of whispers, and part of Alucard wanted to lean in, to listen, to strain until he could make out what it was saying.
Instead, he said the names.
Names of everyone who needed him and everyone he needed and everyone he couldn’t—wouldn’t—lose.
Anisa. Stross. Lenos. Vasry. Jinnar. Rhy. Delilah …
The tournament tents sat empty, the fog reaching inside for signs of life. The streets were abandoned, the citizens forced into their homes, as if wood and stone would be enough to stop the spell. Maybe it would. But Alucard doubted it.
Down the road, the night market was on fire. A pair of guards worked furiously to put out the blaze, summoning water from the lightless Isle while two more tried to wrangle a group of men and women. The dark magic scrawled itself across their bodies, smudging out Alucard’s vision, engulfing the light of their own energy, blues and greens and reds and purples swallowed up with black.
One of the women was crying.
Another was laughing at the flames.
A man kept making for the river, arms outstretched, while another knelt silently, head tipped back toward the sky. Only the guards’ mounts seemed immune to the magic. The horses snorted and flicked their tails, whinnying and stamping hooves at the fog as if it were a snake.
Berras and Anisa waited across the river, the Night Spire bobbed in its berth, but Alucard felt himself moving toward the burning market and the guards as a man rushed toward one of them, a metal rod in his hands.
“Ras al!” called Alucard, ripping the pole from the man’s grip right before it met the guard’s neck. It went skittering away, but the sight of it had given the others an idea.
Those on the ground began to rise, their movements strangely fluid, almost coordinated, as if guided by the same invisible hand.
The guard shot toward his horse, but there wasn’t time. They were on him, hands tearing blindly at the armor as Alucard surged toward them. A man was beating the guard’s helmeted head against the stones, saying, “Let him in, let him in, let him in.”
Alucard tore the man off, but instead of letting go, tumbling away, the man held fast to Alucard’s arm, fingers digging in.
“Have you met the shadow king?” he asked, eyes wide and swirling with fog, veins edging toward black. Alucard drove his boot into the man’s face, tearing himself free.
“Get inside,” ordered the second guard, “quickly, before—”
His voice was cut off by the scrape of metal and the wet sound of a blade finding flesh. He looked down at the royal half sword, his sword, protruding from his chest. As he slumped to his knees, the woman holding the sword’s hilt flashed Alucard a dazzling smile.
“Why won’t you let him in?” she asked.
The two guards lay dead on the ground, and now a dozen pairs of poisoned eyes swiveled toward him. Darkness webbed across their skin. Alucard scrambled to his feet and began to back away. Fire was still tearing through the market tents, exposing the metal cords that kept the fabric taut, the steel turning red with heat.
They came at him in a wave.
Alucard swore, and flicked his fingers, and the metal snapped free as they fell on him. The cords snaked through the air, first toward his hands, and then, sharply away. It caught the men and women in its metal grip, coiling around arms and legs, but if they felt its bite or burn, it didn’t show.
“The king will find you,” snarled one as Alucard lunged for the guard’s mount.
“The king will get in,” said a second, as he swung up and kicked the horse into motion.
Their voices trailed in his wake.
“All hail the shadow king….”
*
“Berras?” called Alucard as he rode through unlocked gates. “Anisa?”