VI
Rhy sat atop his mount, squinting through the London fog for signs of life.
The streets were too still, the city too empty.
In the last hour, he hadn’t found a single survivor. He’d hardly seen anyone at all, for that matter. The cursed, who’d moved like echoes through the beat of their lives, had withdrawn into their homes, leaving only the shimmering mist and the black rot spreading inch by inch over the city.
Rhy looked to the shadow palace, sitting like oil atop the river, and for a moment he wanted to spur his horse up the icy bridge to the doors of that dark, unnatural place. Wanted to force his way in. To face the shadow king himself.
But Kell had said to wait. I have a plan, he’d said. Do you trust me?
And Rhy did.
He turned the horse away.
“Your Highness,” said the guard, meeting him at the mouth of the road.
“Have you found any more?” asked Rhy, heart sinking when the man shook his head.
They rode back toward the palace in silence, only the sound of their horses ringing through the deserted streets.
Wrong, said his gut.
They reached the plaza, and he slowed his horse as the palace steps came into view. There at the base of the stairs stood a young woman with a bunch of flowers in her hand. Winter roses, their petals frosty white. As he watched, she knelt and placed the bouquet on the steps. It was such an ordinary gesture, the kind of thing a commoner would have done on a normal winter day, an offering, a thanks, a prayer, but it wasn’t a normal winter day, and everything about it was out of place against the backdrop of fog and barren streets.
“Mas vares?” said the guard as Rhy dismounted.
Wrong, beat his heart.
“Take the horses and get inside,” he ordered, starting forward on foot across the plaza. As he drew near, he could see the darkness splashed like paint across the other flowers, dripping onto the pale polished stone beneath.
The woman didn’t look up, not until he was nearly at her side, and then she rose and tipped her chin to the palace, revealing eyes that swirled with fog, veins traced black with the shadow king’s curse.
Rhy stilled, but didn’t retreat.
“All things rise and all things fall,” she said, her voice high and sweet and lilting, as if reciting a bit of song. “Even castles. Even kings.”
She didn’t notice Rhy—or so he thought, until her hand shot out, thin fingers clutching the armor plate of his forearm so hard it buckled. “He sees you now, hollow prince.”
Rhy tore free, stumbling back against the steps.
“Broken toy soldier.”
He got to his feet again.
“Osaron will cut your threads.”
Rhy kept his back to the palace as he retreated up, one step, two.
But on the third stair, he stumbled.
And on the fourth, the shadows came.
The woman gave a manic little laugh, wind rippling her skirts as Osaron’s puppets poured from the houses and the shops and the alleys, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. They appeared at the edge of the palace plaza, holding iron bars, axes, and blades, fire and ice and rock. Some were young and others old, some tall and others little more than children, and all of them under the shadow king’s spell.
“There can be only one castle,” called the woman, following Rhy as he scrambled up the stairs. “There can be only one—”
An arrow took her in the chest, loosed by a guard above. The young woman staggered a step before wrapping those same delicate fingers around the arrow’s shaft and ripping it free. Blood spilled down her front, more black than red, but she dragged herself after him another few steps before her heart failed, her limbs folded, her body died.
Rhy reached the landing and spun back to see his city.
The first wave of the assault had reached the base of the palace steps. He recognized one of the men at the front—thought, for a terrifying second, that it was Alucard, before Rhy realized it was the captain’s older brother. Lord Berras.
And when Berras saw the prince—and he did see him now—those curse-dark eyes narrowed and a feral, joyless smile spread across his face. Flame danced around one hand.
“Tear it down,” he boomed in a voice lower and harder than his brother’s. “Tear it all down.”
It was more than a rally—it was a general’s command, and Rhy stared in shock and horror as the mass surged up the stairs. He drew his sword as something blazed in the sky above, a comet of fire launched by another, unseen foe. A pair of guards hauled him backward into the palace a breath before the blast struck the wards and shattered in a blaze of light, blinding but futile.
The guards slammed the doors, the nightmarish view beyond the palace replaced suddenly by dark wood and the muted resonance of strong magic, and then, sickeningly, by the sound of bodies striking stone, wood, glass.
Rhy staggered back from the doors and hurried to the nearest bay of windows.
Until that day, Rhy had never seen what happened when a forbidden body threw itself against an active ward. At first, it was simply repelled, but as it tried again and again and again, the effect was roughly that of steel against thick ice, one chipping away at the other while also ruining itself. The wards on the palace shuddered and cracked, but so did the cursed. Blood ran from their noses and ears as they threw element and spell and fist against the walls, clawed at the foundation, threw themselves against the doors.
“What is going on?” demanded Isra, storming into the foyer. When the head of the royal guard saw the prince, she recoiled a step and bowed. “Your Highness.”