Anisa curled in toward him, then, the way she used to when he told her tales. A flower to the sun, that’s what their mother used to say. Their mother, who’d died so long ago, and taken most of the light with her. Only Anisa held a candle to it. Only Anisa had her eyes, her warmth. Only Anisa reminded Alucard of kinder days.
He lowered himself to his knees beside the bed, holding her hand between his. “A girl was once in love with her shadow,” he began, voice slipping into the low, melodic tone befitting stories, even as the Spire swayed and the world beyond the window darkened. “All day they couldn’t be parted, but when night fell, she was left alone, and she always wondered where her shadow went. She would check all the drawers, and all the jars, and all the places where she liked to hide, but no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find it. Until finally the girl lit a candle, to help her search, and there her shadow was.”
Anisa murmured incoherently. Tears slipped down her hollowed cheeks.
“You see”—Alucard’s fingers tightened around hers—“it hadn’t really left. Because our shadows never do. So you see, you’re never alone”—his voice cracked—“no matter where you are, or when, no matter if the sun is up, or the moon is full, or there’s nothing but stars in the sky, no matter if you have a light in hand, or none at all, you know … Anisa? Anisa, stay with me … please …”
Over the next hour, the sickness burned through her, until she called him father, called him mother, called him Berras. Until she stopped speaking altogether, even in her fevered sleep, and sank deeper, to somewhere dreamless. The shadows hadn’t won, but the spring green light of Anisa’s own magic was fading, fading, like a fire burning itself out, and all Alucard could do was watch.
He got to his feet. The cabin swayed beneath him as he went to the mantel to pour himself a drink.
Alucard caught his reflection in the ruddy surface of the wine and frowned, tipping the glass. The smudge over his brow, where Lila had streaked a bloody finger across his skin, was gone. Rubbed away by Anisa’s fevered hand, or maybe Berras’s attack.
How strange, he thought. He hadn’t even noticed.
The cabin swayed again before Alucard realized it wasn’t the floor tipping.
It was him.
No, thought Alucard, just before the voice slid inside his head.
Let me in, it said as his hands began to tremble. The glass slipped and shattered on the cabin floor.
Let me in.
He braced himself against the mantel, eyes squeezed shut against the creeping vines of the curse as they wound through him, blood and bone.
Let me in.
“No!” he snarled aloud, slamming the doors of his mind and forcing the darkness back. Until then, the voice had been a whisper, soft, insistent, the pulse of magic a gentle but persistent guest knocking at the door. Now, it forced its way in with all its might, prying open the edges of Alucard’s mind until the cabin fell away and he was back in the Emery Estate, their father before him, the man’s hands brimming with fire. Heat burned along Alucard’s cheek from the first lingering blow.
“A disgrace,” snarled Reson Emery, the heat of his anger and magic both forcing Alucard back against the wall.
“Father—”
“You’ve made a fool of yourself. Of your name. Of your house.” His hand wrapped around the silver feather that hung from Alucard’s neck, flame licking his skin. “And it ends now,” he rumbled, tearing the sigil of House Emery from Alucard’s throat. It melted in his grip, drops of silver hitting the floor like blood, but when Alucard looked up again, the man standing before him was and was not his father. The image of Reson Emery flickered, replaced by a man made of darkness from head to toe, if darkness were solid and black and caught the light like stone. A crown glittered on the outline of his head.
“I can be merciful,” said the dark king, “if you beg.”
Alucard straightened. “No.”
The room rocked violently, and he stumbled forward onto his knees in a cold stone cell, held down as his manacled wrists were forced onto the carved iron block. Embers crackled as the matching poker prodded the fire, and smoke burned Alucard’s lungs when he tried to breathe. A man pulled the poker from the coals, its end a violent red, and again Alucard saw the carved features of the king.
“Beg,” said Osaron, bringing the iron to rest against the chains.
Alucard clenched his teeth, and would not.
“Beg,” said Osaron, as the chains grew hot.
As the heat peeled away flesh, Alucard’s refusal became a single, drawn-out scream.
He tore backward, suddenly free, and found himself standing in the hall again, no king, no father, only Anisa, barefoot in a nightgown, holding a burned wrist, their father’s fingers like a cuff circling her skin.
“Why would you leave me in this place?” she asked.
And before he could answer, Alucard was dragged back into the cell, his brother Berras now holding the iron and smiling while his brother’s skin burned. “You should never have come back.”
Around and around it went, memories searing through flesh and muscle, mind and soul.
“Stop,” he pleaded.
“Let me in,” said Osaron.
“I can be true,” said his sister.
“I can be merciful,” said his father.
“I can be just,” said his brother.
“If you only let us in.”
VI
“Your Majesty?”
The city was falling.
“Your Majesty?”
The darkness was spreading.
“Maxim.”
The king looked up and saw Isra, clearly waiting for an answer to a question he hadn’t heard. Maxim turned his attention to the map of London one last time, with its spreading shadows, its black river. How was he supposed to fight a god, or a ghost, or whatever this thing was?
Maxim growled, and pushed forcefully away from the table. “I cannot stand here, safe within my palace, while my kingdom dies.” Isra barred his way.
“You cannot go out there, either.”
“Move aside.”
“What good will it do your kingdom, if you die with it? Since when is solidarity a victory of any kind?” Few people would speak to Maxim Maresh with such candor, but Isra had been with him since before he was king, had fought beside him on the Blood Coast so many years ago, when Maxim was a general and Isra his second, his friend, his shadow. “You are thinking like a soldier instead of a king.”
Maxim turned away, raking a hand through his coarse black hair.
No, he was thinking too much like a king. One who’d been softened by so many years of peace. One whose battles were now fought in ballrooms and in stadium seats with words and wine instead of steel.
How would they have fought Osaron back on the Blood Coast?
How would they have fought him if he were a foe of flesh and blood?
With cunning, thought Maxim.
But that was the difference between magic and men—the latter made mistakes.
Maxim shook his head.
This monster was magic with a mind attached, and minds could be tricked, bent, even broken. Even the best fighters had flaws in their stance, chinks in their armor …
“Move aside, Isra.”
“Your Majesty—”
“I’ve no intention of walking out into the fog,” he said. “You know me better than that,” he added. “If I fall, I will fall fighting.”
Isra frowned but let him pass.
Maxim left the map room, turning not toward the gallery, but away, through the palace and up the stairs to the royal chambers. He crossed the room without pausing to look at the welcoming bed, the grand wood desk with its inlaid gold, the basin of clear water and the decanters of wine.
He’d hoped, selfishly, to find Emira here, but the room was empty.
Maxim knew that if he called for her, she would come, would help in any way she could to ease the burden of what he had to do next—whether that meant working the magic with him, or simply pressing her cool hands to his brow, sliding her fingers through his hair the way she had when they were young, humming songs that worked like spells.
Emira was the ice to Maxim’s fire, the cool bath in which to temper his steel. She made him stronger.
But he did not call her.