And then, after a long moment, Maxim’s corpse rose.
It shuddered, like a curtain in a breeze, and then a sword drew itself free of the ruined chest and clattered to the ground. And then another, and another, one by one until all twelve blades were out, lengths of crimson steel lying in the street. Smoke began to leak in thin tendrils from every wound before drawing together into a cloud, then a shadow, and then, at last, something like a man. It took several tries, the darkness collapsing back into smoke again and again before finally managing to hold its shape, its edges wavering unsteadily as its chest rose and fell in smoldering breaths.
“I am king,” snarled the shadow as the whorls of red in the river vanished, and the mist thickened.
But the nightmare’s hold was not quite as strong as it had been.
Osaron let out a growl of anger as his limbs dissolved, reformed. The spellwork etched into those swords still ran like ice through the veins of his power, stamping out heat and smothering flame. Such a stupid little spell, driven in so deep.
Osaron scowled down at the king’s corpse, finally kneeling before him.
“All men bow.”
Shadowy fingers flicked, once, and the body toppled, lifeless, to the ground.
Insolent mortal, thought the shadow king as he turned and stormed back across the sleeping city and up the bridge and into his palace, fuming as he struggled with every step to hold his shape. When his hand grazed a column, it went straight through as if he were nothing.
But the false king was dead, and Osaron lived on. It would take more than spelled metal, more than one man’s magic, to kill a god.
The shadow king climbed the stairs to his throne and sat, smoking hands curled around the arms of his seat.
These mortals thought they were strong, thought they were clever, but they were nothing but children in this world—Osaron’s world—and he had lived long enough to take their measure.
They had no idea what he was capable of.
The shadow king closed his eyes and opened his mind, reaching past the palace, past the city, past the world, to the very edges of his power.
Just as a tree might know itself, from deepest root to topmost leaf, Osaron knew every inch of his magic. And so he reached, and reached, and reached, grasping in the dark until he felt her there. Or rather, felt what was left of him inside her.
“Ojka.”
Osaron knew, of course, that she was dead. Gone, blown away as all things were in time. He had felt the moment when it happened, even that small death rippling his psyche, the sudden sense of loss pale but palpable.
And yet—Osaron still ran through her. He was in her blood. That blood might no longer flow, but he still lived in it, his will a filament, a thread of wire woven through her straw body. Her consciousness was gone, her own will forfeit, but her form was still a form. A vessel.
And so Osaron filled the silence of her mind, and wrapped his will around her limbs.
“Ojka,” he said again. “Get up.”
III
WHITE LONDON
Nasi always knew when something was wrong.
It was a gut knowing, come from years of watching faces, hands, reading all the little tells a person made before they did a bad thing.
It wasn’t a person going wrong now.
It was a world.
A chill was back in the air, the castle windows frosting at the corners. The king was gone, still gone, and without him, London was getting bad again, getting worse. The world felt like it was unraveling around her, all the color and life bleeding out the way it must have done the first time, all those years ago. Only according to the stories that was slow, and this was quick, like a snake shedding a skin.
And Nasi knew she wasn’t the only one who felt it.
All of London seemed to sense the wrongness.
A few members of the king’s Iron Guard, those still loyal to his cause, were doing their best to keep things from getting out of hand. The castle was under constant watch. Nasi hadn’t been able to sneak out again, so she didn’t have fresh flowers—not that many had survived the sudden chill—to lay near Ojka’s body.
But she came anyway, in part because of the quiet, and in part because the rest of the world was getting scary, and if something happened, Nasi wanted to be near the king’s knight, even if she was dead.
It was early morning—that time before the world woke up all the way, and she was standing beside the woman’s head, saying a prayer, for power, for strength (they were the only prayers she knew). She was running out of words when, on the table, Ojka’s fingers twitched.
Nasi startled, but even as her eyes widened and her heart skipped, she was talking herself down, the way she had done when she was little, and every little shadow had a way of becoming a monster. It could have been a trick of the light, probably was, so she reached out and tentatively touched the knight’s wrist, feeling for a pulse.
Sure enough, Ojka was still cold. Still dead.
And then, abruptly, the woman sat up.
Nasi staggered back as the black cloth tumbled away from Ojka’s face.
She didn’t blink, didn’t turn her head, or even seem to notice Nasi or the death table or the candlelit room. Her eyes were wide and flat and empty, and Nasi remembered the soldiers who used to guard Astrid and Athos Dane, hollowed out and spelled into submission.
Ojka looked like them.
She was real, and yet not real, alive and still very, very dead.
The wound at her neck was there and deep as ever, but now Ojka worked her jaw. When she tried to speak, a low hiss came from her ruined throat. The knight pursed her lips, and swallowed, and Nasi watched as tendrils of shadow and smoke wove over and around her neck, almost like a fresh bandage.
She leapt down from the table, upsetting the vines and bowls that Nasi had laid so carefully around her corpse. They fell to the floor with a clang and a crash.
Ojka had always been so graceful, but now her steps had the stilted quality of a colt, or a puppet, and Nasi backed up until her shoulder hit the pillar. The knight looked straight at the girl, shadows swimming through her pale eye. Ojka didn’t speak, only stared, the drip of spilled water tapping on the stones behind her. Her hand had begun to drift toward Nasi’s cheek when the doors swung open and two members of the Iron Guard stormed in, drawn by the crash.
They saw the dead knight standing upright and froze.
Ojka’s hand fell away from Nasi as she spun toward them with returning grace. The air around her shimmered with magic, something from the table—a dagger—sailing into Ojka’s hand.
The guards were shouting now, and Nasi should have run, should have done something, but she was frozen against the pillar, pinned by something as heavy as the strongest magic.
She didn’t want to see what happened next, didn’t want to see the king’s knight die a second time, didn’t want to see the last of Holland’s guard fall to a ghost, so she crouched, squeezed her eyes shut, and pressed her hands over her ears. The way she used to when things got bad in the castle. When Athos Dane played with people until they broke.
But even through her hands, she heard the voice that came from Ojka’s throat—not Ojka’s at all, but someone else’s, hollow and echoing and rich—and the guards must have been afraid of ghosts and monsters too, because when Nasi finally opened her eyes, there was no sign of Ojka or the men.
The room was empty.
She was all alone.
IV
The Ghost was almost back to Tanek when Lila felt the vessel drag to a sudden stop.
Not the smooth coasting of a ship losing current, but a jarring halt, unnatural at sea.