In Ashes Lie

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 3, 1648

Throughout the night garden, the only sound was the quiet trickle of the Walbrook—a river long buried and half-forgotten by the City of London, now a part of the Onyx Hall.

No lords and ladies walked the path, conversing quietly. No musicians played. The faerie lights that lit the garden formed a river of stars above, as if guiding Lune to her destination.

She needed no guide. This was a path she had walked many times before, every year upon this day.

She wore a simple, loose gown, a relic of an earlier age. The white fabric was rich samite, but unadorned by jewels or embroidery, and she stepped barefoot on the grassy paths. Tonight, the garden was hers alone. No one would disturb her.

The place she sought stood, not in the center of the garden, but in a sheltered corner. Lune had no illusions. No one in her court mourned as she did, for faerie hearts were fickle things—most of the time.

Once given, though, their passion never faded.

The obelisk stood beneath a canopy of ever-blooming apple trees, their petals carpeting the grass around its base. She could have had a statue carved, but it would have been one knife too many. His face would never fade from her memory.

Lune knelt at the grave of Michael Deven, the mortal man she had once loved—and did still.

She kissed her fingertips, then laid them against the cool marble. Pain rose up from a well deep inside. She rarely dipped into it, or let herself think of its existence; to do otherwise was to reduce herself to this, a shell containing nothing but sorrow. Her grief was as sharp now as the night he died. It was the price she paid for choosing to love him.

“I miss you, my heart,” she whispered to the stone—a refrain repeated far too many times. “There are nights I think I might give anything to see you again…to hear your voice. To feel your touch.”

Her skin ached with the loss. No more to have his arms around her, his warmth at her side. And he could never be replaced: Antony was not and never would be Michael Deven. She had known it, when she first vowed always to keep a mortal at her side, ruling the Onyx Court with her. She created the title Prince of the Stone to cushion the blow of change, so that she might think of it as a political position, an office any man might fill. Not her consort, with all that implied.

Antony understood. As had Michael; he knew he could not live forever. Dwelling too long among the fae would break even the strongest mind. The time her Princes spent in the Onyx Hall, the touch of enchantment they bore, slowed life for them; Antony, at forty, looked a decade younger. But despite that, inevitably, they aged and died.

The grass pricked through the fabric of her gown, and she dug her fingers into the cool soil. “We needed more time,” she murmured. “Time to map the path I stumble blindly down now. ’Tis a fine thing, to say this place stands for the harmony of mortals and fae, the possibility of bridging those worlds. But how? How may I aid them, without taking from them their choices? How may they aid us, when they do not even know we are here?”

It had been easier, when couched in terms of use instead of aid. That notion still thrived too strongly in her court, and not only because of Nicneven’s interference. Lune herself still struggled to effect change, without crossing that line.

And she had failed.

Six years of civil war. Royalist Cavaliers against Parliamentarian Roundheads, conflict reaching into every corner of the realm. Brother against brother. Father against son. Scotland at war with England, Ireland in raging revolt. The King imprisoned, sold by his own subjects to the Parliamentary armies for thirty pieces of silver. The land she had sworn to defend had torn itself apart…and she was powerless to heal it.

“We took Mary Stuart from them,” she said, tasting the bitterness in the words. “So they have taken her grandson from us.”

Nicneven’s grudge, given scope and power by Ifarren Vidar: an old enemy, and one Lune should have suspected from the start. But intelligence had put him in France, at the Cour du Lys, after he found no faerie kingdom in England would welcome him. Lune thought him safely gone. Nicneven, however, had given him a home. There was bitter irony in that; Vidar, at Invidiana’s command, had helped the Queen of Scots along her path to the headsman. Lune had no proof, though, and Nicneven would not believe her without it.

So now Lune reaped the consequences of letting him escape when she ascended her throne.

The years pressed down upon her, a weight she rarely felt. But by her bond of love, she tasted mortality, and at moments like this it threatened to crush her. The weariness of ages sapped her strength, and yet her mind would not rest; even now, here, she dragged the chains of her duty and her failures.

She had to lay it aside. For this one night, every year, she was not the Queen of the Onyx Court; she was simply Lune, and free to grieve, not for England, but for a single man.

Curling her legs underneath her, she leaned against the stone that marked Michael Deven’s grave, and gave herself over to sorrow.

LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: October 4, 1648

The house showed no physical scars of six long years of struggle. The defenses built for London had faced no army, let alone been breached. But the marks were there, albeit more subtly: in the absence of tapestries, candlesticks, much of the silver plate. The continual levies for the maintenance of the Parliamentary armies, the repeated loans from the City, had stripped Antony of funds, while the Royalist forces in Oxfordshire had so beggared his estate there that he was forced to sell it.

This is the price of moderation.

It could have been worse. Rightly suspecting his dedication to the Parliamentary cause, the commissioners appointed to gather the money had assessed him more highly than most, but at least they had not driven him from his home. And when things were at their tightest, carefully managed gifts of faerie gold had kept him from losing all.

Antony sat at the table, hands flat on its surface, gazing sightlessly at the wood between his fingers. The house was quiet. His sons and daughter had been sent to live with a cousin of Kate’s in Norfolk—a man of neutrality so inoffensive that he had managed to preserve himself relatively unscathed through a conflict that had brought not only all of England, but Scotland and Ireland, too, into battle. Antony’s manservant, inspired by sectarian zeal, had joined Fairfax’s New Model Army, fighting for Parliament against the King, and had not come back. The cook, finding herself with much less work to do, drank—but at least she was quiet about it.

He heard a door open, footsteps on the stairs. A light step, and so Antony did not bestir himself. Soon enough Kate came into the room, and stopped when she saw him.

She finished unwinding the scarf that had protected her against the chilly air, and laid it at the other end of the table. “Coal is dear,” she said, “but not so bad as it has been. We shall have more tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Antony said, rising to take his wife’s hands. She had suffered more than he through the bitter winters of the war, when the King or the Scots controlled Newcastle and little coal came to London. That had been the other reason for sending the children away: the cousin had wood and turf to burn for warming his house.

She gripped his fingers, chin sunk down; then made an unreadable noise and turned away. “What is it?” he asked, baffled by her sudden aversion.

Kate pulled off the modest linen cap that covered her hair and twisted it before facing him, as abruptly as she had fled. “Do you think I don’t see the inkstains on your fingers? Do you think I don’t know what they mean?”

Antony stared at his hands. He had not given it much thought. His attention was elsewhere—a thousand other elsewheres. More than he could handle.

“Tell me,” she said bitterly, “do you work with Lilburne? Or someone else? What ideas do you put about, that are so subversive they must be printed in secret? Do not tell me those are from a quill; I know those marks from these.”

Her tirade left him speechless. Could she honestly believe he sided with Lilburne’s outrageous Levellers, those men who wished England to be ruled by the common mob? Lilburne spoke honestly about the corruption of Parliament, its leaders gone mad with their newfound power, but Antony’s agreement with the man ended there.

Except that was not Kate’s point. If she objected to the ideas he championed, she would argue them with him. This was something else.

She objected to secrets.

“Not Lilburne,” he admitted quietly, lowering his hands. “But yes—there is a printing press.”

Kate’s jaw tensed before she replied. “And what is it you deem so important, that you would risk being dragged to the Tower, or pilloried in the street?”

Antony sighed and went back to his chair. After a stiff hesitation, she joined him. “What else have you known me to promote? Moderation, and the hope of peace. Revelations of what goes on inside the House of Commons, what the Army plans, that their leaders would prefer the people not to know.”

The words came easily, hiding a world of confusion beneath. Moderation, yes—but how? There were not two sides, and a clear course between them; the world had come to such a disordered pass that he could see no sure path back to sanity, let alone herd anyone else down it.

His wife absorbed this quietly. She had not forgiven him; he had just openly admitted to endangering himself and his family, in these most dangerous times. But the initial flare of her anger had settled back to a smoldering heat. “When they published those incomplete reports from General Cromwell,” she said. “Was it your doing, that the full texts also came out?”

“One. The other was a mistake—sincere or contrived—on the part of the Lords.”

Kate still had her cap in her fists; she smoothed out the creases and laid it on the table. “Antony… they know you for what you are. Do you think you have fooled them, by cutting your hair like a Roundhead?” He put one hand self-consciously to his barely covered collar. “How many members of the Commons have been driven out for opposing them? If they do not learn of this secret press of yours, they will hound you into the Tower for your politics, and the one makes it more likely that they will discover the other.”

She did not—need not—know how close he had already come. The fae were cautious of their aid these days; London was plagued with men convinced they could enact the godly Reformation they had come so near, and missed, in the days of old Elizabeth. It made an uncomfortable world for those who lived below. But they had stepped in when he had need of them, to keep him free of the Tower.

“Antony,” Kate said, her voice barely more than a whisper, “will you not consider leaving?”

He flinched. That pleading note…she was no coward, his Kate. But she saw little profit to remaining in the City, and much danger. Nor was she wrong.

But Lune asked him to stay.

Openly, he had little use in the Commons. If he spoke his mind, he would be out before he could finish. But he watched, and reported, and worked covertly to tip the balance when he could. Even now, commissioners sat in the King’s prison on the Isle of Wight, struggling to achieve a treaty that might yet restore England to some semblance of ordinary life.

He reached out and took Kate’s hands again, resting them atop the linen cap. “I cannot back away,” he said. “The Army has too many supporters in Parliament for anyone’s peace of mind. We are a hair’s-breadth from it declaring itself the master of England, and the rule of law giving way to the rule of the sword.”

“Have we not been there six years?” she said, bitter once more.

“Not so badly as we might be. There are some yet in the Commons who fear the Army’s leaders, and want to see our old ways restored, with the King on his throne instead of in prison. But the hotter minded among them would cast aside all the structures and precepts by which God meant men to be governed, and leave us at the mercy of a Parliament with no foundation but what armed might makes.”

They walked that edge already, starting with Pym’s old nonsensical arguments: that the King’s authority was separate from the person of the King, and that such authority rested with Parliament so long as Charles did not do as he should—in other words, as Parliament wished. Yet for all he despised such sophistry, such justifications for these wars against the Crown, Antony wished Pym were still alive. The man had at least been a politician, not a bloody-minded revolutionary. The men who had succeeded him were worse.

His wife took a deep breath and stood, towering over him in his seat. “Antony,” she said, “I will not let you destroy this family.”

His heart stuttered. “Kate—”

“They know how you speak; they know how you write. If not that, then someone will see you going to this press of yours.” She straightened her skirts, unnecessarily. “Henceforth I shall handle these pamphlets of yours.”

Now he was on his feet, with no recollection of having moved. “Kate—”

“Do you think me any happier with this world than you?” she demanded, blazing up. “Scottish forces brought onto English soil to fight the King of them both, then selling that King to his enemies—this ‘New Model Army’ of Parliament’s holding the country to ransom—all the bonds of courtesy and respect that once held us together broken, perhaps beyond repair—” She cut herself off, breathing heavily. Mastering her rage with an effort, Kate said in a low growl, “I can write as well as you. I do not know what to put in them, but you can tell me that.”

His tongue seemed to have fled. When it came back, Antony said the first thing that came into his mind—which was far from the most important objection. “But I cannot send you to print them.”

“Why not?”

Because the press lies in the Onyx Hall. He had gotten himself into this disaster by expiating the sin of keeping one secret; now he brought her hard up against another. And this one, he could not confess.

“If they saw you,” he said, “do not think they would hesitate to administer punishment because you’re a woman.”

Kate sniffed. “If you must so shelter me—surely you do not work alone? No. Send some man or boy, then, to collect the papers from our house. That will be less suspicious than you forever running off to the thing you don’t want them to find.”

Against his will, he found himself considering it. The messenger could be a fae, and disguised under a variety of glamours to prevent suspicion. And it would be one less thing for him to exhaust himself over—

“I know that look,” Kate said dryly. “You just thought of agreeing, then wondered in horror how you could possibly consider such a thing. If it salves your conscience at all, tell yourself this is safer than letting me find my own means of being useful. Else you’ll find me sailing about the countryside with as many armed men as I can raise, calling myself ‘Her She Majesty Generalissima’ like the Queen.”

Laughter snorted out of him despite himself. She would do it, too; plenty of noble and gentry women had maintained their homes against sieges during the war, or smuggled messages through enemy lines. Kate chafed under the austere life of London nowadays, with no plays or frivolity on Sundays.

Truth be told, he chafed, too. And he had the outlet of the Onyx Hall, which bit its thumb at Puritan piety.

“I shall take your silence as a ‘yes,’ ” Kate said, more cheerful than she had sounded in days. “Fear not—you may read over what I write, and tell me if it’s up to standard. Now, let us go wake the cook from her stupor, and have some supper.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 8, 1648

An assortment of fae ringed the room, whispering amongst themselves, from elf-kind to goblins, pucks, and hobs. They had come to see for themselves if the rumors were true.

From behind the figured velvet curtains circling the bed came harsh, panicked breathing. Lune gestured, and a sprite whisked them aside.

Lady Carline flinched at the movement. Her lovely, voluptuous face gleamed with the sweat that soaked the bedclothes, and her pale fingers clutched convulsively in the fabric.

“What happened?”

The lady struggled upright. “Majesty—the man sang—”

“Stop. Begin earlier.” Worry sharpened the command; Lune schooled herself to a softer tone. “Why had you gone above?”

“To—to visit a man.”

She need not have bothered asking. As far as Carline was concerned, bed play was the purpose for which mortal men had been put on earth. Men of any kind, really. “Who?”

Carline brushed damp strands out of her face, a reflexive gesture, as if being questioned about her lover made her realize her disheveled and unattractive state, and the onlookers there to witness it. “A Cavalier,” she said. “One who took arms for the King, and fought at Naseby. He lives in secret, in a friend’s cellar, and I—I keep him company.”

The faintest exhalation from Leslic, at Lune’s left shoulder—sardonic amusement at the delicate phrasing. Or perhaps irritation that, after all these years, he had gained the office of Master of Hounds, but not the royal bed. Lune ignored him. “Go on. Leave out nothing.”

The beauty patch of star-shaped taffeta Carline had applied to her cheekbone was peeling off. Its loose edge danced as she swallowed hard and said, “I went above—by way of the well in Threadneedle Street. With a glamour, of course. He’s in Finch Lane. It wasn’t far. But as I was turning the corner, a man—I don’t know who he was—he began to sing a psalm—”

Whispers ran around the walls. Scowling, Lune gestured sharply; Amadea began herding, and soon the Lady Chamberlain had cleared the room of everyone except Lune, Carline, Leslic, and herself.

Carline turned her tear-streaked face up to Lune. “Your Majesty—my glamour fell.”

So Lune had heard. The lady was a fool, venturing forth on a Sunday for an afternoon’s dalliance. What others turned into the stuff of rumor and fear, though, Lune credited to a more ordinary source. “You had eaten bread?” Carline nodded. “How long before?”

“Scarce half an hour, madam.”

Which should have been safe. A single bite protected for a day. Lune’s gaze fell upon an intricate casket, grown instead of carved out of intertwining birch twigs. When she lifted the lid, she found easily two weeks’ worth of bread inside, torn into suitable pieces. She wondered what favors Carline had been trading, to have so much on hand. Three bad harvests in a row had made bread scarce for everyone, and mortals did not tithe to fae when they could barely feed their own.

She lifted a piece: coarse-ground wheat, a little burnt on the bottom. “Is this what you ate?”

“No, madam. It was oat bread I had.”

Oat bread. Poor stuff, but not surprising; the wealthy of London were much more strongly Puritan than their lessers, and spared little thought for the fae, except to term them devils in disguise. If the pattern continued, she would have to find other solutions to this chronic shortage.

From behind her, Carline whispered, “Your Grace—what if it no longer works?”

Lune turned back to see the lady on her feet, dark hair tumbled around her face in a cloud, framing her dead white skin. “What—what if their faith has grown so strong—”

“I doubt it,” Lune said coolly, cutting her off before she could go further. Before she could give strength to the fears already spreading outside the chamber door. “More likely an error on the part of whatever goodwife placed it out. Perhaps the local minister came by and blessed the house. Lady Amadea—” Her chamberlain curtsied. “Ask among the court; find who else has that bread, and confiscate it.”

“They will complain, madam.”

And if she did not confiscate it, they would complain she failed to protect them. “Replace it from my own stores. And bring me what you find.”

Leslic stood attentive at the foot of Carline’s bed. Not putting himself forward, not offering his aid; he had learned that pushing gained him little. But always ready to help, yes.

That was why Lune had given the task to Amadea.

I have nothing but instinct—yet it has served me well enough in the past. And instinct tells me this trouble is his doing.

Certainly other troubles were. Lune resisted the urge to press one hand over her shoulder, where the iron wound ached. Still not fully healed, and it never would be. The pain was a useful reminder.

Unfortunately, she could not ignore Leslic entirely; the slight would be all over court before the next meal. Drawing him aside, she murmured, “Stay with Carline, and give her comfort. Else she will dwell on this incident, and worry herself sick.”

The knight bowed his shining head. Comfort would probably involve the bed Carline once more swooned upon, but so much the better. It might blunt his advances toward Lune herself, at least for a while.

She could not put any warmth into her countenance as Leslic went gallantly to Carline’s side. His Ascendants had disrupted Puritan conventicles, in such a manner as to direct the blame toward Royalist sympathizers; they found it great sport, to watch the mortals fight amongst themselves. Lune kept watch on all the entrances to the Onyx Hall, forestalling any repeats of Taylor’s attempted destruction, and had Antony more closely guarded than the Prince knew, but some of Leslic’s schemes she allowed to play out, cringing at the need, because they revealed the threads of the web in which he sat.

But perhaps it was time to end it. She knew his allies, his resources, his methods of communicating with Nicneven and Vidar. They were preparing for some final move, she had no doubt, to hamstring the treaty with Charles; civil war was not enough, when they could depose the King entirely. Leslic’s troublemakers would be crucial to their plans. What profit remained in keeping him at her side?

Very little. Perhaps none. And that meant that, at long last, the time had come to dispose of the golden Sir Leslic.

THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: October 11, 1648

Antony’s shoulders ached with tension as he rode north out of the City. Peace stood so close he could taste it; all they needed was this treaty with the King, restoring him to his proper place. But if the Army and its Leveller supporters staged some rebellion, it might all yet fall apart again.

To forestall that, he worked with one hand in each world. During the day, he ate, breathed, and slept Parliamentary affairs, struggling alongside others to maintain a strong enough alliance to oppose the Army’s officers in the Commons: Henry Ireton, Oliver Cromwell, and all the rest.

At night, he turned to the faerie folk for help. And tonight, that meant riding to Islington.

On horseback, it took mere minutes to reach the Angel Inn. He had to bribe a guard to let him through Cripplegate; the curfew on the City was much more stringent than usual. Come daylight, though, he would need to be back in Westminster. He was missing a debate regardless, as once again the Commons ran late into the night.

His destination was not the Angel, but an enormous, tangled rosebush that stood behind it, resisting even the thought of being trimmed back. Antony concealed his horse in a stand of trees and crossed to the bush, which offered up one stubborn blossom, despite the dreary autumn chill. “Antony Ware,” he murmured into it, and reached into the leather purse he wore over his shoulder.

While he pulled a cloth bundle out, the branches shifted and wove themself into a thorn-studded archway over a set of battered steps leading downward. Treading carefully in the hollows worn by untold feet before his, Antony descended into the Goodemeades’ home.

Rosamund was waiting for him in the comfortable chamber below. “We heard your pigeon, my lord,” she said, offering him a curtsy. “I’d be happy to look at what you have.”

Fae had several advantages over mortals when it came to secret communication, among them the usefulness of pigeons. Antony had no need to tie a message to its leg; the sisters conversed with birds as easily as with him.

He unwrapped his bundle and held a small hunk of rye bread out to Rosamund. She had put on a glamour, making herself the height of a short woman, instead of a child. The brownie pinched off a bite and chewed it thoughtfully. “Hard to say,” she told him once she had swallowed, “but I fear you may be right. Shall we test it?”

Not in the house, certainly. They went back to the open air, and for safety’s sake into the trees, where his horse dozed—a more sensible creature than him. Rosamund folded her hands expectantly. Antony hesitated. “If our suspicions are correct—”

“I’ve lived through worse,” Rosamund told him stoutly. “Sing away, my lord.”

He would not sing; the brownie had offered herself up for enough without suffering his inability to carry a tune. Instead he spoke softly.

Once, right after he bound himself to the Onyx Court as Prince of the Stone, the words had fled his tongue, silenced by a faerie touch. Even now they did not come as naturally as they had in his boyhood. He had to exert his will to say, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”

Rosamund was ready for it, and so she did not cry out. But she stiffened, and her entire body shook; and when it was done shaking, she was the size of a child again, and swaying on her feet. Antony caught her and lowered her gently to the cold dirt. His cloak, flung around her shoulders, made her look even tinier, but Rosamund gripped it gratefully.

“No,” she said in a valiant imitation of a light tone, “I don’t think it’s working.”

His prayer was a common one in the Church of England, nothing drawn from a more Puritan faith. But they did not have to look to such arcane causes for an explanation. “That bread,” he said grimly, “was passed on to Lewan Erle from one of Sir Leslic’s closest followers.”

The little hob’s normally pink cheeks were pale from more than moonlight. “She will never just throw him out. You’ve not been at court, my lord—too many people admire him, since he saved the Queen. Lune dares not be thought capricious, casting him down when he’s enjoyed so much favor. And she hesitates to scheme against him; it reminds her too much of Invidiana.”

The old Queen. Lune rarely spoke of her, but at times Antony felt as if her black shadow still darkened the court and all its doings. Even Lune herself—simply by her resolution not to be like her predecessor. “She will have to do something,” Antony said. “Others have seen their protections fail; they fear to go into the streets at all. Nicneven may have at last found a way to destroy everything the Onyx Court stands for.”

“Not just Nicneven,” Rosamund corrected him. “Vidar.”

“Yes, this ‘Lord of Shadows.’ ” The name twisted in his mouth, warped by anger for the damage the creature had done. Not just to the Onyx Court, but to the world above it; Antony would never know if civil war might have been avoided, had Vidar not taken every opportunity to deepen the bitterness and rancor that divided England from itself. “Lune speaks but little of him. Why such hatred between them?”

“I will tell you,” Rosamund said, “but not here.”

Reflexively, Antony glanced about, searching the nighttime woods. “Is someone watching?”

The brownie grinned with more of her usual cheer. “No, but I’m freezing my rump off. Come inside.”

He helped her to her feet, glad to see that smile return, and they went back down into the sheltering warmth. Gertrude was attending Lune at court, and so they had the comfortable home to themselves. Rosamund returned Antony’s cloak with thanks and stood warming her hands at the fire. “Vidar,” she told him, “was a lord in the old court.”

“One faithful to Invidiana?”

“Not in the least! He was ever searching for ways to sell her out to her enemies, and claim the throne for himself.”

Antony pulled off his gloves and rubbed his hands over his shortened hair. “So he envies her for doing what he could not.”

Rosamund frowned. “That, but also other things. We, er—used him at the end, when the overthrow came. And it made him very unwelcome among the other faerie Kings of England. Last we heard, he’d gone across the Channel and found a place in the Cour du Lys, where they do not love Lune either.”

But now he was in Scotland, and helping to destroy what he could not have. Always Scotland: the clashes there had precipitated Charles’s crisis nearly a decade ago, and now the Army was rabid to prevent the Presbyterian terms the Scots wanted in the treaty with the King. Though Ireland, to be fair, was an equally fruitful source of trouble.

Sighing, Antony rose and said, “And this trick with the bread is his latest treachery, by way of Sir Leslic. Clever. I can only hope that when I confirm it to Lune, she will rid herself of that snake, before he can harm us further.”

“Oh, don’t you worry; I’ll send her a mouse.” Rosamund eyed him critically. “You look about done in, my lord. Sit down, and have a restorative draught before you go.”

The restorative draught would be mead—it was always mead, whatever ailed a man—but Antony did not object. “Thank you,” he said. He would take his rest where and when he could find it.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 31, 1648

The group that gathered in the antechamber was not a merry one. It rarely was, even in happier times; All Hallows’ Eve did not evoke laughter or the casual flirtation that occupied many fae. But this year of all years it was grim, for London was filled with godly zeal, and the traditional protections seemed to be failing.

Which made it all the more vital to go out. The old practices of the night had largely died at the Reformation, but faerie-kind kept their own ceremonies. Those souls who lingered after death, rather than fleeing to Heaven or Hell, occupied a realm not far removed from that of the fae, and on this night each year the two worlds touched. Forgoing the rituals of the night would only encourage fear.

Thirteen stood in the chamber, ranging in rank from Lune and her knight-protectors of the Onyx Guard down to a trio of tough-minded goblins—a mara, a hobyah, and a fetch. They showed no apprehension, and grinned at those who did. Goblins were far from the most elegant of fae, and so were often scorned at court, but at least Lune was sure of their loyalty.

As she was sure of the disloyalty of others.

She felt a shiver in her bones as the churches of the City above rang out the midnight hour, the peals of their bells washing harmlessly over the charms that kept the palace safe. At one end of the chamber loomed the dark archway that would take them to a courtyard off Fish Street. Some of her more timid courtiers cast frightened glances in its direction.

Serenely, as if she had no fears in all the world, Lune said, “Come, Sir Leslic. The bells have rung.”

The golden-haired knight bowed and took up a coffer of faceted amethyst. Kneeling, he presented it to Lune, lifting the lid to reveal the carefully portioned pieces of bread within.

The bells had faded; all was silent, inside and out. Lune reached forth and took a piece. But she did not lift it to her lips; instead she looked at it curiously, then transferred her attention to the still-kneeling knight. “Tell me, Sir Leslic,” she said. “Is the plan merely for us to suffer the consequences of walking unmasked in the mortal realm—or do you plot something more? Do Puritan preachers wait above, to strike our souls to dust?” Her voice hardened and rang out from the chamber’s barrel-vaulted ceiling. “For what purpose do you offer us untithed bread?”

He almost dropped the coffer. Leslic’s head came up with a jerk, and for the barest of instants she saw his eyes unguarded. There lived the truth she had guessed at all this time, and her stomach tightened with sudden terror. If he acted upon it—

But Leslic was nothing if not a practiced dissembler. “Untithed bread, your Majesty? What—” Now the coffer did go down, cracking hard against the stone as he surged to his feet. One hand gripped his sword, but he kept his head well enough not to draw in her presence—not without better cause than he had. “Guards! Someone has attempted to deceive the Queen’s Grace!”

Lune stopped the knights with a sharp flick of her hand. “You speak it well,” she said, “and we might even believe you—had we not proof. You are the author of this deceit, Leslic. We have evidence in abundance. And, not content with the fears you have spread among our subjects, now you strike at our very heart.”

A snap of her fingers, and the goblins were there. The mara had the belt from around Leslic’s waist before he even knew it, his still-sheathed sword clutched in her bony fingers, and the fetch grinned maliciously into his eyes. It was only a death omen for mortals, but even a fae might shudder to see such a smile.

They had their orders from her the day before. Lune brought the goblins because her guard could not be trusted; she could not risk them hesitating in their arrest. Even now the knights hovered in confusion, on the balls of their feet, wanting to move but not knowing to what end. Leslic drew himself up nobly. “Majesty,” he swore, “I had no intention of giving you untithed bread.”

Which was true, as his earlier protest had not been. Leslic might seed the court with ordinary bread, never offered as a gift to the fae, but he was not foolish enough to give it to the Queen. Some of his followers, on the other hand, needed little to encourage them in their folly. Lune refused to contrive a false incident for Leslic’s downfall, however richly he deserved it; but she could and would tangle him in the fringes of his own schemes. And she needed this, an open offense, something appalling enough that her people would repudiate Leslic of their own accord, robbing him and all his faction of the influence they enjoyed.

“If you wish it,” she said, exquisite in her courtesy, “you may defend yourself in wager of battle. If you are guiltless of changing tithed bread for untithed so as to spread fear and dissension, then by all means, sir—prove it with your blade.”

A flush crept upward from his collar. That was an accusation he could not defeat; just as Cerenel’s negligence had ensured his loss in the duel of honor, so Leslic’s guilt would damn him if he fought for his innocence. They were not mortals, to rise or fall by their skill with a blade.

She broke her gaze from his at last to survey the antechamber. Her knights, courtiers, and ladies were all suitably shocked—even those who had spoken fair to Leslic in the past. “He stands silent,” she said, as if it needed pointing out. “And we have abundant evidence of his guilt. His…and others’.”

Rooting out the Ascendants in their entirety would cripple her court, but she didn’t need to. The four chief malignants would suffice; without them, the rest would crumble back into line. Even now, the other three should be in the custody of her loyalists.

Gesturing at the goblins who still held Leslic, she said, “Take him to the Tower. We shall question him there about the masters he serves—once we have fulfilled our duties tonight.” At another snap of her fingers, a spriggan came out of the shadows, bearing safe bread. “Come. All Hallows’ Eve awaits us.”

THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON: November 7, 1648

“You’re sending me away?”

The courtyard of the Royal Exchange was a poor place for a private conversation, but Benjamin Hipley had sought Antony out there, and did not look minded to hold his peace. Glancing around, Antony pulled him into the corner of the arcade, where a stretch of the bench that ringed it sat empty. “You speak as though you are the first to be asked to serve the Onyx Court elsewhere.”

Ben’s native discretion did not fail him; he kept his voice low, though intense. “It’s not a matter of leaving London. I cannot leave you. Not at such a time.”

The damp chill of the air stifled business, leaving the courtyard only half-full of its usual gentry. The flowerlike array of colors that once prevailed had given way to the sad hues favored by the godly; though the fabrics were still rich, a dull green was the brightest thing in sight. For all the fae reflected the tastes of the world above, sometimes they did so by inversion. Court nowadays was enough to make a man’s eyes bleed.

Antony gestured at his own staid murrey doublet. “I am a respectable baronet, an alderman, and a member of Parliament. By the skin of my teeth, but it suffices. I will be safe.”

Ben shook his head. “You need me here. The machinations in Parliament, over this treaty with the King—”

“I need you more there. I can watch Parliament on my own, but I cannot keep one eye on Westminster and one on Hertfordshire. Henry Ireton has called a ‘General Council of the Army’ at St. Albans, and it has the potential to destroy everything. He hates the treaty like poison. His idea of peace is to see the King punished like any other man.”

The blood drained from Hipley’s face. “He goes that far?”

It was the logical extension of all that had gone before, yet it still had power to appall. Pym had undermined the foundations of sovereignty itself, until men like Ireton could look at the King and see a common criminal.

But not everyone felt that way, God be thanked. “You’re not the only one to flinch,” Antony said grimly. “General Cromwell is delaying in the North; I think he hesitates to oppose a fellow officer openly, but he would see us follow a different course. Fairfax argues against it as well. Those two are greatly loved in the Army, and without them, Ireton may achieve nothing—but I cannot afford to let him go unwatched.”

The truth was that they needed agents within the Army, men or disguised fae placed close enough to the generals and lower officers that they could supply both intelligence and action as needed. But the Army was beyond their reach: forged out of the disastrous chaos of Parliament’s early armies, it had become a finely honed weapon that crushed the Royalists at every turn. And between their common soldiers, who liked the Leveller arguments that they should rule England, and their fiercely Puritan officers, there had never been any good chance to position such agents. Antony had sat in Westminster through all those years of war, exerting what force he could in Parliament, but the sieges and battles, the capture of prisoners and the smuggling of information, had gone on in a hundred locations across the kingdom, miles away from the men who thought the power was still in their hands.

Until they reached this point. A General Council of the Army at St. Albans, and Henry Ireton their self-appointed champion, preparing to tear England’s wounds yet wider.

Scowling, Ben rose and moved a few steps away, pausing with his back to Antony. At last the intelligencer asked, “Will the treaty conclude in time?”

The question every man in Parliament would give his fortune to answer. They had already extended the deadline for the negotiations once. England wanted peace; it wanted an end to the chaos and upheaval caused by the disruption of government and the forced quartering of soldiers and the lack of uniformity in religion.

Some of England did. But not all.

“We stand at a precipice,” Antony said, just loudly enough for Ben to hear. “The King is poised to retake all he had, making no concessions he cannot squirm out of once power is his again. Those who sue for peace tie hope over their eyes like a blindfold, telling themselves he can be trusted. But our alternative is the Army, and the Levellers, and Independency in religion. We know it; our treaty commissioners know it. Charles knows it, and so he sits in his prison on the Isle of Wight and waits.”

Ben turned back, his hands curled at his sides, not quite fists. “You haven’t answered my question.”

Antony offered him a baring of teeth that might stand in for a smile. “Whether or not it concludes in time depends on what Ireton and the Army do. Get to St. Albans—tell me what you find there—and I will answer your question then.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 20, 1648

The greater presence chamber had never been Lune’s favorite part of the Onyx Hall, being too grand, too chill—too full of the memory of Invidiana. For formal state occasions, however, she could not avoid it. Anything less would be an insult to the dignitaries who gathered for this ceremony.

So she sat upon her silver throne, and a selection of her courtiers waited in bright array across the black-and-white pietre dura floor. Eochu Airt stood to one side, in the full splendor of what passed for court dress among the Irish, with gold torcs banding his neck and arms.

He made a poisonously polite nod to the empty seat next to hers on the dais. “I see your Prince could not be here today.”

Lune pressed her lips together. Antony’s reply to her messenger had been brusque to the point of rudeness: he was at Westminster, and could not leave. The General Council of the Army had presented a Remonstrance to the Commons, a listing of their grievances, like the one the Commons had once presented to the King. Lune did not know their demands; her messenger had not tarried, but come back with stinging ears to relay Antony’s words. He did say, though, that the Remonstrance had already been two hours in the reading, and showed no signs of ending soon.

Antony’s refusal vexed her, but perhaps it was just as well. “He sends his regrets, my lord, and wishes you all good speed.”

A snort answered that. “At Parliament, I see. Voting again to gut my land and hang it out to dry?”

Her ladies whispered behind their fans. Only their eyes showed, glinting like jewels in the masks they had adopted and elaborated from mortal fashion; even Lune could not read their expressions from that alone. “My lord ambassador, nothing happens in isolation. Lord Antony wishes the Army disbanded as much as you do. With the soldiers owed arrears of pay, however, and fearing reprisals for their wartime actions, setting them loose would threaten stability here.”

“And so he votes to send them to Ireland. Where England sends all of its refuse.”

Now it was not lips but teeth she was pressing together. “Had the mortals of your land not risen in rebellion—”

“Had they not done so, we would not now have a free Ireland!”

“You will not have it for long.” Try as she might to be angry with Eochu Airt, in truth, Lune felt sadness; the Irish, mortal and fae alike, were so blinded by success and the hope it brought that they did not see the hammer poised above them.

She tried to find the words to make at least this one sidhe see. “Had they settled with Charles during the war, they might have won something.” And brought the King to victory in the bargain. “But the Vatican’s ambassador encouraged them to overreach, and now, wanting the whole of their freedom, they will instead lose the whole. Their Catholic Confederation will survive only so long as England’s attention is divided. Once we have peace here, someone—Charles or Parliament—will crush them.”

“With the very Army your Prince voted to send. Just as he voted to save Strafford’s life.”

Against Lune’s wishes, in both cases. If she could have persuaded the Prince to vote against sending regiments across, it might have gone some way to healing that injury. But Antony—understandably, damn him—was more concerned with England’s well-being than Ireland’s. In the end the proposal had failed by a single vote… but not his.

“The hammer has not yet fallen upon you,” Lune said, doing what little she could to mollify the sidhe. “I will do everything in my power to stay it.”

Whatever response Eochu Airt might have made, he swallowed it when the great doors at the other end of the chamber swung open. Lune’s Lord Herald spoke in a voice that echoed from the high ceiling. “From the Court of Temair in Ireland, the ambassador of Nuada Ard-Rí, Lady Feidelm of the Far-Seeing Eye!”

An imposing sidhe woman appeared in the opening. Her green silk tunic, clasped at the shoulders with silver and gold, was stiff with red-gold embroidery; her cloak, thrown back, revealed strong white shoulders. The branch she held, however, was mere silver, compared to Eochu Airt’s gold. She knelt briefly, then rose and advanced until she came to the foot of the dais, where she knelt again.

“Lady Feidelm,” Lune said, “we welcome you to the Onyx Court, and tender our thanks to our royal cousin Nuada.”

The new ambassador’s voice was rich and finely trained. “His Majesty sends his greetings, and begs your kind pardon for calling away Lord Eochu Airt, whose services are needed in Emain Macha, serving King Conchobar of Ulster.”

Lune smiled pleasantly at the old ambassador, who stood mute and unreadable. “We shall sorely miss his presence at court, for he has been an unfailing advocate on Temair’s behalf, and an ornament to our days, with poetry and song.”

A lovely mask of courteous speech, laid over the simple truth that Eochu Airt had asked to go. He could not be quit of them soon enough. What remained to be seen was what Feidelm’s appointment signaled. If the lady were amenable, Lune hoped to negotiate for aid against Nicneven.

But that would have to wait. Lune beckoned to Lord Valentin, who came forward with a parchment already prepared. When the revocation of Eochu Airt’s diplomatic status was done, and Feidelm proclaimed in his place—then she would see the dance Temair followed now.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 21, 1648

The feasting and presentation of gifts ran through the night, with music and dancing and a contest of poetry between the old and new ambassadors. Eochu Airt begged leave to retire when it was done, though, and soon after Lune withdrew to walk with Feidelm in the garden.

The sidhe hailed from Connacht, and spoke as openly of King Ailill and Queen Medb as she did of the High Kings of Temair. The different perspective was useful to Lune, after years of Eochu Airt’s Ulster-bred sentiments. More useful still was the lack of hostility; Feidelm might not be an ally, but she clearly intended to form her own opinion of Lune, rather than adopting her predecessor’s. It was as close to a tabula rasa as Lune would get, and with Nicneven temporarily set back by the removal of Sir Leslic, Lune had the leisure to try and mend her relations with Temair.

“Lady Feidelm,” she said as they wandered the paths, “I know from the branch you bear that you are a poetess. Yet for you to be called ‘the Far-Seeing Eye’—are not such matters the province of your druids?”

“The imbas forosna is the province of poets,” the sidhe replied in her rich lilt, trailing her fingers over the flank of a marble stag that stood along the path. “For my skill at that, I am so named.”

“We have no seer at this court,” Lune said, and did not have to feign the regret in her voice. “And we live in most unpredictable times, when all the world seems upside-down. Might I prevail upon you to see on our behalf, and give some sense of what lies ahead?”

Feidelm pursed her sculpted lips. “Madam, visions do not come at a simple command. It needs something to call them, to bid the gates of time open.”

She had heard that the Irish hedged their divination about with barbaric rituals. “What do you need?”

The answer made Lune wonder if this were some malicious prank perpetrated on her as petty revenge for her soured relations with Temair. But Feidelm’s attendants did not seem at all surprised when their mistress called for a bull to be slaughtered. In the end Lune sent a pair of goblins to steal one from a garden above, with Sir Prigurd to carry it back down, and to leave payment for the missing beast. Then the Irish set to work, and soon presented the ambassadress with meat and broth and a stinking, bloody hide. There in the night garden, without any embarrassment, Feidelm stripped off her finery and wrapped herself in the hide, then lay down beneath a hazel tree.

The attendants bowed and retired, leaving Lune alone with the poetess.

She had no idea what to expect, except that Feidelm had promised her answers to three questions. Lune pondered her choices while the sidhe lay silent in the trance of the imbas forosna. When the faerie’s emerald eyes snapped open, she twitched in surprise.

Feidelm said, “Speak.”

The words stumbled out, despite her preparation; the strange atmosphere of this entire affair had Lune off balance. “What—what do you see for my people?”

“I see them bloody; I see them red.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Warfare, or murder. Were the precautions she had taken not enough? Killing Leslic and his allies was too drastic a move; fae bred so rarely. Sending them back to Vidar was not an option. So she had placed them in cells beneath the Tower of London—but perhaps she must do more.

Vowing to double their guard as soon as she left the garden, Lune tried again. “What of my home?”

“I see it ashen, I see it gold.”

Less clear—unless the men who insisted the rule of their Christ would begin in eighteen years were right, and London to rise as the new Jerusalem, the fifth monarchy of Heaven. But would he cast down the City first? Feidelm’s answers were maddeningly cryptic, and far too brief.

Her third question came the hardest of all. This was the answer Antony wanted, the answer she feared to obtain for him. “What do you see for England?”

Feidelm took a slow, wavering breath; then the words flowed from her like a river, as if this one question released all the eloquence dammed up before. “I see a broad-shouldered man who takes the head and becomes the head, though he crushes the crown beneath his boot. In his hands he holds the ink that brings death: both for them who wrote it, and him it is written for. I see the churches cast down and raised up, and the people weep for sorrow and joy. Many are the wounds this land has suffered, and will suffer, and yet will go forward; I see it endure, and yet I see its end, that lies both near and far. The Kingdom of England will die twice ere long, and you will see those deaths.”

Hope and fear warred in Lune’s heart, and fear had the advantage. Nothing endured forever, not even fae; they could be slain, or become weary of life and fade away. The great empire of Rome had spanned the world, but where was it now? Fragmented and gone, its Italian heartland languishing under Spanish rule. She knew, if she was honest, that some day England, too, would pass. But when? What was soon to a faerie?

Feidelm shuddered, and Lune thought the trance ended. But the sidhe’s gaze shifted to Lune, unfocused yet piercing, as if seeing through her flesh to the spirit beneath, and her voice still held the resonance of the imbas forosna. “What is a king, or a queen? For whom does one such rule, and by what right? What shall be the fate of sovereignty? These are the questions the land asks, the people, the heart. But you have not asked, and so you must answer them yourself.”

Her eyelids sagged, pale lashes brushing her skin. When Feidelm opened her eyes once more, the fog of her trance had lifted from them, but she seemed to have no awareness of the words she had just spoken. For a moment, Lune met that emerald gaze, and wondered.

Did she invent her answers, as a subterfuge to gain some advantage?

She might wish it so, but she thought not. The Irish seer had spoken truly.

What lay hidden in her words—that, Lune would have to discover for herself.

PALACE YARD, WESTMINSTER: December 5, 1648

The sun crept above the horizon, hidden behind a veil of thick clouds and blustering winds. The only sign of its presence was a muted brightening, a gray pallor replacing the blackness of night.

The doors to Westminster Hall swung open, and out filed a line of weary men: the two-hundred-odd members of Parliament who had doggedly persevered, in a session that lasted all day and all through the night, to surmount the obstacles of acrimony and fear, and to answer the question put to them.

The men agitating for the Army’s outrageous wishes had wanted that question put thus: whether the King’s answers to the treaty, brought to them at long last, were satisfactory. But every man partisan enough to the Royalist cause to say yes had long since been driven from the Commons; that vote was designed to fail, and so those who sought peace had diverted it away. Satisfaction was not needed. After the long struggles, the near misses and dashed hopes for reconciliation, all the Commons wanted to know was this: whether the King’s concessions were enough to be going on with.

The question passed without a division. They would accept the treaty, and move on to restoring peace in England. The wars were done at last.

Antony ignored the abusive language flung by the Army officers who pursued the members down the stairs and out through Westminster Hall; he could barely hear them through his jaw-cracking yawn. Soame, at his side, had declared that walking normally was not worth the effort; he staggered as if drunk. “Somewhere in Hell,” the younger man said, ramming the heels of his hands into his eyes, “there is a circle where men are forced to listen to Prynne go on for three hours without pause. And when I am sent thither, I’ll tell the Devil I have been there already, and ask for something new.”

It sparked a weary laugh, tinged with exhausted relief. “And in Heaven is a feather mattress, well fluffed and warm. I’m for home,” Antony said. “I will see you tomorrow.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, WESTMINSTER: December 6, 1648

He fell asleep like a man who has been clubbed over the head, and woke only for supper. “It passed?” Kate asked; she had waited the whole night for him, knowing they debated England’s fate. And Antony said, “Pray God we will find some peace now.”

The race that preceded the vote had drained him as badly as the unending debate. From St. Albans the Army had marched, drawing nearer every day, into Westminster itself, until the fear that Ireton and his soldiers would forcibly dissolve Parliament had frayed every man’s nerves. To do so would destroy the Houses’ last shreds of tattered credibility; anything after that would have no claim to legitimacy. But they might have done it.

Falling prey to his relief would be easy. Their vote yesterday, however, had not sent their problems up in smoke; the Army was still quartered all over Westminster, still capable of trouble. Antony had not heard from Ben Hipley in days, not since the soldiers left St. Albans. He went by coach the next morning, and heard the measured beat of boots on cobblestones. Lifting the curtain, he saw soldiers patrolling the streets—not the Trained Bands of the City, but New Model men, loyal to Henry Ireton.

Then he descended from his coach in the Palace Yard, and saw it was worse.

Two companies, one of horse, one of foot, were stationed around the edges of the courtyard. They stood at attention, not menacing anyone—but again, where were the Trained Bands, whose task it was to guard this place? Antony stood, staring, unblinking, until from above he heard a whisper from his coachman. “Sir…”

Glancing up, he saw fear in the man’s eyes. “Go,” he said, as if there were nothing amiss. “I will be well.”

Or if I be not, you can do nothing to help me.

With his coach rattling away behind him, he settled his cloak and advanced. The soldiers let him pass without comment, and he breathed more easily—but did not release his fear. Their presence must portend something ill. He worried at the question as he hurried through the vaulted, crowded space of Westminster Hall, past the legal courts that met there, into the Court of Wards that lay in a set of chambers off its southern end. He was almost at the stairs leading up to the lobby of the Commons when he heard a disturbance.

“Mr. Prynne,” an unfamiliar voice said, “you must not go into the House, but must go along with me.”

Heedless of the looks from men carrying on their business around him, Antony stopped just shy of the doorway and listened.

From the stairs came William Prynne’s defiant tones. “I am a member of the House, and am going into it to discharge my duty.”

Footsteps, then a sudden scuffle. Despite his better judgment, Antony peered around the corner—and what he saw turned his blood to ice.

Soldiers, more New Model men, blocked the stairs to the Commons. Antony recognized one fellow, a grinning dwarf of a man called Lord Grey of Groby; but the rest were unfamiliar, and among them was a colonel who directed his men to drag the struggling Prynne bodily back down the steps. Prynne fought them, his ugly, scarred face red with effort, but he stood no chance. Recognizing that, he employed his favorite weapon, that had served him so loyally during the debate. “This is a high breach of the privileges of Parliament! And an affront to the House of Commons, whose servant I am!” Antony leapt back as the soldiers hauled the man through the doorway. All pretense of business in the Court of Wards had stopped, and Prynne’s bellows rang from the walls; he knew how to use his voice. “These men, being more and stronger than I, and all armed, may forcibly carry me where they please—but stir from here of my own accord I will not! ”

His own accord mattered not a whit; will he, nil he, they forced him through into the Court of Requests, and came out a moment later, breathing hard, but some of the men laughing.

By then Antony had faded back amongst the bystanders, where they might not see him. He could taste his own pulse, so strongly was his heart pounding. What criteria formed that list, he didn’t know, but by any standards the Army might use, he would not be allowed through.

If the Commons will not vote against the King, as the Army wishes it to—why, then, they will purge it until it does.

He had known for months—years—that the power in England had shifted once again, into the hands of the Army’s officers, both in and out of Parliament. But he had never imagined they would exert it so nakedly, against all the laws and traditions of the land.

Fear curdled the blood in his veins.

So long as the contrary members did not sit, that might satisfy them; it might be enough for him to return home, and not try to enter the Commons. But what if it were not? If they came after him…

They were arresting members of Parliament. They might do anything.

He could flee to the safety of the Onyx Hall, had he warning enough, and no soldier would find him there.

But he could not take Kate with him.

Whether Lune would allow her in was not the question. Antony could not so suddenly reveal to his wife the secrets of all these years. But—Hell, he snarled inwardly, and cursed his wandering thoughts, which flinched from the real question: whether he should advance or retreat.

Advance, and he would find himself held in the Court of Requests with Prynne—and, no doubt, others from the Commons. Retreat…

Antony thought of Kate. The hard set of her jaw when she insisted she be permitted to lend her aid in the writing of secret pamphlets. Her disdain for his sober clothes and trimmed hair, disguising his body as he disguised his principles—all to maintain his position in the Commons and Guildhall, where he might do some good.

But I haven’t, he realized. Not enough. Not to prevent this catastrophe.

A clerk stood nearby, still gaping. With scarcely a word, Antony claimed a pen and scrap of paper from the man and scribbled a quick note, spattering ink in his haste. The clerk handed over sealing wax without being asked, and after Antony had pressed his signet into the soft mass, he gave the paper back, followed by the first coin that came into his hand—a shilling, and more than enough. “Take this note to Lombard Street—the house under the sign of the White Hart. Do you understand me?” The clerk nodded. “Go.”

With the man gone, Antony took a moment to straighten his doublet and settle his cloak on his shoulders, before he turned and ascended the steps.

Groby whispered in the colonel’s ear, pointing at the list. When Antony reached them, the officer swept his hat off and greeted him with hypocritical courtesy. “Sir Antony Ware. I am Colonel Thomas Pride, and my orders are not to permit you within the House, but to take you into custody.”

Antony met his eyes, then Groby’s, willing some doubt to be there. But he found none. “You have no authority save that which your swords and pistols make. By barring me from my rightful place, you trample upon the very liberties you swore to protect.”

Groby said, “We are liberating Parliament from a self-interested and corrupt faction that impedes the faithful and trustworthy in the conduct of their duties.”

He sounded almost as if he believed it, and perhaps he did. If there was one thing Antony knew from all these struggles, it was that men could come to believe in anything, no matter how absurd.

Pride said merely, “Do you refuse to go?”

The eager-handed soldiers wanted another fight, but Antony would not give them one. He would be ruled by choice, not by the sword. “You will not need your weapons,” he said. “Under protest, I will go.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: December 6, 1648

Lune was playing cards with her ladies when Ben Hipley slammed through the door, trailing an offended usher. “They’ve taken him.”

She stared at the man. Where had he been for the last week? She had quarreled with Antony over sending Hipley to St. Albans; she had another use for their mortal spymaster. But she had been willing to accept it so long as Hipley was sending useful information. For days, though, nothing—and now he showed up utterly without warning, unwashed and bristling with unshaved stubble.

Then his words sank in. “What? Who?”

“Antony,” Hipley said, confirming the fear already forming in her mind. “The Army. They were waiting at Westminster. They’ve taken Antony to Hell.”

The cards slipped from Lune’s nerveless fingers and fluttered to the carpet; she had stood without realizing. Her body felt very far away. All she could hear was that final word, echoing like thunder.

“It’s an eating house!” Hipley exclaimed, putting his hands up.

Lune returned to herself with the crack of a bone popping back into its socket. “In Westminster. There’s three of them—Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. Someone with a twisted sense of humor put them in Hell. Lord Antony, and about forty others.”

Nianna fluttered at Lune’s side, fan in hand as if she thought her Queen would faint. Lune gestured her away, irritable now that the fear was gone—or at least reduced. Her trembling, she hoped, was hardly noticeable. “Members of Parliament?”

He nodded. “Anybody with a record of voting against the Army’s desires has been excluded from the Commons; the worst offenders are arrested. But there’s more, madam. They’ve moved the King to Hurst Castle, under strict guard. They’re going to try him.”

Hence the arrest of those in opposition. Even with the open Royalists driven out these past years, and recruiters elected to fill their places, the full Commons would not vote for the Army’s desired aims—not to the extent of putting their anointed sovereign on trial like a common criminal.

And what sentence would they pass?

That was a concern, but not the first one. Lune had no immediate way to stop this coup; she had to focus on getting Antony out. She cursed the choice of Westminster. The Onyx Hall did not extend beyond the walls of the City. But the Army had already occupied London once, during the later part of the war, creating much ill will; they would not be so stupid as to imprison their opponents among their enemies.

The cards were long forgotten; all her ladies were on their feet, hovering uselessly. I let myself be caught here, idle, while outside the world changed irrevocably. “Get out!” Lune spat, flinging her fury at them; as one, they curtsied and fled.

Leaving just her and Hipley. Lune paced the chamber, fingers curled under the point of her bodice. “Can you get in to see him?”

The plan taking shape in her mind collapsed when he shook his head. “I’ve already been caught asking too many questions around St. Albans.”

He made no explanation beyond that, but the mystery of his absence was solved. Small wonder they had no warning of this beforehand. Snarling, Lune spun back to the nearest table and grabbed a mask Nianna had left behind, intending to hurl it across the room. Then she paused.

“You can still go,” she said, fingering the mask, and gave Hipley a thin smile. “You only need a different face.”

HELL AND WHITEHALL, WESTMINSTER: December 7, 1648

“Wallingford House, my lily-white arse.”

Soame muttered the words under his breath, a profane counterpoint to the psalms some of the other men were singing. The holy music grated on Antony’s nerves, but there was little else to do; more than two score men were crammed into a pair of upstairs chambers, with nowhere to sleep but benches or the floor. A few read, by the light of what candles they had been grudgingly allotted; others talked in low voices in the corners. Prynne was pacing, threading his way carefully amongst those trying to rest.

Antony wondered if it was a misunderstanding or a deliberate lie that made Hugh Peter promise they were to be taken from Westminster Hall to suitable lodgings at Wallingford. Instead the coaches deposited them scarcely a street away, at the aptly named Hell. A handful of the prisoners had been offered their parole and leave to go home, but to a man they had refused. He was not the only one taking a martyr’s pleasure in facing this outrage.

Morning light peeped through the shutters, lending slivers of brightness to the otherwise gloomy chamber. Light-headed from lack of food and sleep, Antony nevertheless crossed the room and threw open the door.

The pair of soldiers outside jerked around, hands on their pistols as if eager to strike. Antony carefully stayed inside the threshold, making no threatening move. “You have been holding us since yesterday morning with no food, and little to drink. Unless it is your officers’ intention to starve us, we need breakfast.”

“And if it is your intention to starve us, at least have the decency to admit it, so we can begin trapping pigeons and rats.” Thomas Soame had come up behind his right shoulder, and his stomach rumbled loudly in accompaniment.

The soldiers merely glared. “Get back inside.”

The hostility was nothing new. Who spread the rumor, Antony did not know, but their guards believed them to have pocketed the coin that should have covered the Army’s arrears of pay. I can no longer even tell what might be faerie interference, and what is simply the madness of our own world.

“Some of these men are ill,” Antony said. As if to demonstrate, Sir Robert Harley sneezed miserably, huddled on his bench. He was one who could have gone home, but refused. “I do not imagine your Provost-Marshal would be glad to hear that anyone came to great harm while under your watch.”

One soldier sneered, but the other said, “We’ll ask,” and slammed the door shut.

The Provost-Marshal agreed to request food, but was gone for hours, and when he returned it was not to give them breakfast. Instead the arrested members were shoved back into the coaches and taken to Whitehall. Nor was there anything waiting for them on the other end but a cold room without a fire, where they waited for hours longer. Supposedly the General Council intended to interview them, but Antony suspected that message was nothing more than a delaying tactic, something to give hope to the men who still believed that if they just protested the illegality of their treatment loudly enough, the officers would come to their senses.

At last a man came in with burnt wine and biscuits. The prisoners fell to as if it were a feast, scattering around the chamber with their food, like dogs protecting the bones they gnawed upon. Antony waited, letting others take their share first, until at last the man came around to him.

“Lord Antony,” the fellow said in an undertone, “her Majesty sent me. I am to try and get you out.”

Antony blinked. He’d never seen the soldier before, but that meant nothing; he simply could not believe she would risk sending a faerie into the Puritan teeth of the Army.

And so she hadn’t. “Ben,” the man whispered, jerking his thumb surreptitiously toward himself.

There was no reason one couldn’t put a glamour on a mortal; Antony had just never thought to do so. He cast a swift glance around. Only one guard was looking his way, but that was already too many; they could not talk for long. “We’ve been kept in Hell.”

“I know.”

“Too closely guarded there and here. You’ll never manage a rescue. Do it politically.”

That was all he dared say; Ben had to move on with his wine jug. Antony spoke in hope; he didn’t know if there was any way to free him through legitimate efforts. But any attempt to do so by more arcane means would attract too much attention, if only by his sudden absence.

So he sat in the room with his fellow prisoners until long after the sun had set and an officer came in to say the General Council was too busy to see them until the morrow. “Back to Hell we go,” Soame muttered, but no; a troop of musketeers took them into custody and marched them to the Strand. Antony suffered himself to be hauled along by the arm, ignored the insults of the soldiers, and thought, Very well. I am a prisoner, as I chose. But what can I accomplish from here?

I can speak my mind.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: December 11, 1648

“What is he doing? ” Lune exploded, hurling down the papers she held.

Benjamin Hipley wisely waited until the fluttering pages had settled before he said, “Making a point, madam.”

“He does us no good there. Cromwell has his minions running about, planning who knows what against Ireton—certainly I do not know. And why not? Because Sir Antony Ware, who should be helping me, chose to go to prison!”

It was unfair to shout at Hipley, who was doing everything he could. But the man was the son of a cooper; his contacts were apprentices and laborers and dockhands on the streets of London, not the gentry and officers who would decide the fate of the kingdom. Antony was her eyes and ears when it came to such matters, and he was under guard in the King’s Head, one of two inns to which the secluded members of Parliament had been moved.

Hipley coughed discreetly and, bowing, offered her a slender sheaf of papers.

She regarded them with deep suspicion. “What are these?” “The good Lord Antony is doing,” Hipley said. “Not alone; I’m given to understand one William Prynne did much of the scribing. But the Prince wishes it published, as soon as may be.”

Lune accepted the sheaf. Across the top, in a bold hand she did not recognize, was a title: A Solemn Protestation of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members. The rest was less clear to the eye, but she glanced over it, and marked many calls for action against the Army, which had sinned so gravely against the liberties of Parliament.

“Will it do any good?” she asked, half to herself.

Hipley paused before answering, unsure whether she addressed him. “It may, madam. Short of an armed revolt at the King’s Head, or a bald-faced theft of him by faerie magic, I see little else we can do.”

Stir up anger against the Army. It might work. The officers were losing the support of the men beneath them, who wanted outrageous reforms even Ireton balked at, and the common people hated them, even before the purge of the Commons. General Fairfax, the beloved hero of the New Model Army, was no fool; he had done what he could to quarter his soldiers in warehouses and other empty places. But nothing could hide that London was under martial occupation. There were even troops inside St. Paul’s itself. Lune had little care for the houses of the Almighty, but the cathedral was a sorry sight, shorn of its grandeur, its choir stalls and paneling reduced to firewood for the soldiers.

Opponents of the Army were plentiful; what they were not was unified. If they could be joined to this cause, though, however briefly—

It might at least free Antony. And Lune needed that, if she were to do anything about the rest of it.

Lune handed the Solemn Protestation back to Hipley. “Have a fair copy made; then take those to Lady Ware. This protestation should be printed above, where people can hear of it. And talk to Marchamont Nedham. His Mercurius Pragmaticus is too Parliamentarian for my taste, but it’s the most effective news-sheet in London; we may as well make use of it.”

Hipley bowed. “And for Lord Antony?”

She gritted her teeth. “If his voice is all he has left himself, then bid him use it well.”

WESTMINSTER AND LONDON: December 25, 1648

The guarded rooms in the Swan and the King’s Head made a more tolerable prison than Hell even when they had over forty men crammed into them; now, with half that number freed, they almost passed for comfortable.

Prynne sat at the table, scratching away at yet another lawyerly condemnation of the Army’s actions. “What other word can I use than villainous? ” he asked, frowning at his page.

“Working still?” Antony said, sitting with one boot propped against the wall. “Today is Christmas, you know.”

“What of it?”

Antony sighed. Why must so many Puritan Independents follow a vision of God that has no room in it for beauty or celebration?

Prynne chewed on the battered end of his quill, then scribbled a few more words. “It is madness,” he muttered to himself, as if it had not been said a thousand times before, by every man here. “If they had simply dissolved Parliament—”

“It would still have been an outrage.” Antony took down his boot and shook his head. “Parliament cannot be dissolved except by its own consent; we created that law years ago.” But Prynne was right: it would have had some savor of legitimacy about it, with a new Parliament elected to replace it. Arresting the dissenting members was possibly the worst course of action Ireton could have followed, comparable to Charles’s smaller, failed attempt before the outbreak of war.

An uneasy thought came, lifting him to his feet. “Prynne—you hear things, as I do. Did Ireton intend this purge?”

“What?” Prynne blinked up at him. The firelight was not kind to him, highlighting the scars where his ears had been, the brand on his cheek. Before he devoted his energies to arguing against the Army, it had been the Presbyterians, and before that the godly Independents he later joined, but it was his opposition to the King that had earned him repeated sentences from the Court of Star Chamber. “No, he wanted a new Parliament. Edmund Ludlow insisted on the purge.”

And where had Ludlow gotten that notion? Antony did not realize he had said it out loud until Prynne shrugged and said, “Villainy, no matter who its author. But I keep using that word; surely there must be others. For variety, you see.”

“Try Harley downstairs,” Antony said, distracted. “He has a talent for words.”

Prynne grunted and stood, gathering up his papers and pen. Antony paced as he left, scratching at his overgrown beard.

Purging the Commons: the most outrageous, divisive, destructive thing the Army could have done, short of declaring itself the sole authority over England, defying King, Commons, and all. And while Antony did not doubt Ludlow and the others mad enough to do it…

Evil thoughts, whispered into the right ears at the right time, had nurtured violence in London before.

Had Ifarren Vidar’s minions visited that council at St. Albans?

He and Lune had expected the next move to come through Sir Leslic’s Ascendants, who had seemed to be positioning themselves to create more anger against the Royalists, which would help the Army’s cause. But what if Vidar had gone directly for the Army itself? The Commons had voted to restore the King; a new House, if the old were dissolved, might well do the same. This purge was the only way to ensure a Commons composed solely of men who would act against Charles Stuart.

Which would please Nicneven very well.

And Antony’s own arrest would distract Lune, at this most crucial of times.

Movement in the shadows made him leap nearly out of his skin. But the figure Antony saw was familiar to him, and would hardly welcome the arrival of his Puritan fellow captives. He swallowed the cry just in time.

The mara Angrisla was not much prettier than Prynne, being a nightmare personified. But Antony had seen Lune’s secret messengers before, chosen more for their stealth than their social graces. “Lord Antony,” the mara said perfunctorily. “You’ll be out today. Her Majesty sent me to tell you.”

So much for his great martyrdom. But Antony had let his guilt over previous failures drive him into a greater one: he let himself be taken from Lune’s side, when she needed him most. And perhaps Vidar had predicted that, too.

Certainly Antony had not done here what he hoped. The surprise of the arrests had, in the end, come to nothing much; the prisoners were being released a few at a time, with little fanfare, while some troublesome few were moved to closer confinement in St. James’ Palace. Those still held here could do little more than write pamphlet after pamphlet, from the Solemn Protestation onward—most of which might as well be flung into the void, for all Antony knew of their effect.

He might not do much good outside, either. He would not swear his dissent from the treaty vote on the fifth—the vote overturned by the purged Commons a week later—and so would not be readmitted to his seat. But he might yet do some good in Guildhall. And if his suspicions were correct, he needed to be in the Onyx Hall, pursuing the question of Vidar. “Bear my thanks to her Majesty,” he told the mara, and resumed his pacing, worrying at his thoughts like a dog with a bone.

Soon enough a messenger came to take him and a few others to Whitehall. Fairfax, of course, was “too busy” to see them; Antony imagined the man was busy indeed, trying to check the excesses of his brethren in arms. In time, however, a lesser officer told them they were free to go.

Exiting into the frosty street, Antony found a familiar carriage waiting for him. The coachman opened the door, and a voice called out, “How long did they keep you waiting?”

Antony climbed in and sat across from Thomas Soame. The other man had been freed five days before, with many of their companions, and looked worlds more cheerful. “A few hours.”

“About what I expected. I passed the time by drinking.” Soame leaned out the window and called to the coachman, “Lombard Street.”

Home. And Kate. But Antony said, “No—take me to the Guildhall.”

Soame shook his head. “You don’t want to go there. Haven’t you heard?” At Antony’s alarmed look, he explained, “The Common Council elections were four days ago. Parliament passed an ordinance debarring anyone who favored the treaty with the King. We may have a Royalist Lord Mayor right now, but his councilmen are a pack of frothing Levellers.”

Even allowing for Soame’s tendency to exaggeration, it was appalling news. “Are we disabled?”

“You may be.” Soame fished around the coach floor and produced a small jug from behind his feet. Antony accepted a swig, expecting wine, and choked on aqua vitae. “Depends on whether they know you helped write the Solemn Protestation.”

Which was to say, another damnable ordinance. Word of it had reached them in prison, of course: no one involved with the Protestation could ever hold public office or a seat in Parliament again. “They don’t have the slightest shred of authority backing it,” Antony said. Anger warmed his body against the icy air. “To call the Commons a free and representative body, after what they did to us—”

“Not to mention they can barely manage a quorum most days,” Soame agreed. “Hell, even Vane isn’t attending, and he’s been the Independents’ leader for how long now? Some men are afraid to show their faces; others stay away in protest. The Lords muster six on a good day. It’s a farce.”

“I’m not laughing,” Antony said, more sharply than Soame deserved. “So tell me, then—what reply is planned?”

His friend blinked owlishly above the furred edge of his cloak. “Reply?”

“What protest? You cannot tell me the people are taking this in silence.”

“Oh, they’re not. I’ve seen a few petitions—not that the Commons or the General Council will even receive them—and enough argumentative pamphlets to paper over St. Paul’s. Publishing is the latest fashion, you know.”

Indeed. What was well and good for men in prison, though, was hardly enough for men who had their freedom. “What action?” Antony demanded in frustration.

The bitter humor faded from Soame’s face. “None that I’ve seen.”

None? It was inconceivable. “But the London Presbyterians hate the Army.”

“And preach against them at every opportunity. More words. It’s all words, Antony, from the Thames to the City wall.”

He shook his head, curling fingers numb with cold into fists at his sides. “Then I will change that.”

“How? Man, there’s artillery at Blackfriars, and soldiers quartered three doors down from your house. The Army lets people talk, but anyone who moves will be crushed like an ant.”

“Are you telling me the citizens of London are afraid to defend their liberty?”

“I’m telling you they’re tired,” Soame answered bluntly. “Six years of unrest, civil war from one end of the land to the other—trade is decaying, we’ve had three bad harvests in a row, and there’s ice on the Thames already. They’re minded to hold on to what they have, rather than risk losing the rest.”

And so by their indifference, they will lose that rest. Except that Antony knew, even as he thought it, that he was wrong. The Army would make a mockery of their liberties, gut Parliament, force the King to the indignity of trial, and otherwise destroy half of the things the war had supposedly been fought to defend, but the average man could still expect to work at his trade and go home to his family at night. And so long as he had that, it was possible to overlook the things he had lost.

Those lost things mattered. But if pamphlets and preachers could not move men to action, what could? When would the people of London stand up?

The coach had rattled down the frosted streets while he and Soame argued, over the Fleet ditch, through Ludgate, and across the City to his home. Now it rolled to a stop, and a moment later the coachman opened the door for him. Soame reached over before Antony could move and gripped his arm. “I understand,” his fellow alderman and erstwhile member of Parliament said, quietly serious. “But I think they mean this trial to frighten the King into real concessions. Once that is done, we will have sanity again.”

“I hope you are right,” Antony replied. “But I will not trust only to hope.”

Then he descended from the carriage and turned to face his house. Kate stood in the door, well-muffled in a cloak, but she threw its edges wide to envelop him in a tight embrace. “Welcome home,” she said into his shoulder, “and merry Christmas.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: January 9, 1649

“Six trumpeters,” Antony said through his teeth, “and two troops of horse to keep Dendy safe while he read the proclamation. The Act they passed three days ago was no bluff.” He spat the word out, contemptuous of its pretended authority. Acts were things passed by King, Lords, and Commons—not Commons in the absence of Lords or King.

Not Commons against the King.

“So they will do it,” Lune murmured, warming her hands at the fire. “They will put him on trial.”

“They will play at it, like mummers. This so-called High Court of Justice is nothing more than a pack of rogues and self-interested knaves. None of their original Chief Justices would have anything to do with it—a tiny show of principles and reason. The Commons has no jurisdiction to try the King.”

No one did. Lune knew little of the common law of England, but she knew that much. A sovereign monarch was authority. Mortals derived it from the Almighty; fae based it in the very realm itself, which answered only to its rightful master. Neither source allowed for subjects to declare their own preeminence, then use it against those set to rule them.

She recognized the touch of hypocrisy in her own thoughts. Invidiana had not designated Lune her heir and passed the crown to her; the change of Queens was born of rebellion. An accidental one, in some ways—Lune had not meant to claim the throne—and one could argue the illegitimacy of Invidiana’s own power. But in a very real sense, Lune was more guilty of treason than the fae now imprisoned beneath the Tower.

Perhaps that made her, of all people, qualified to recognize it in others.

Turning from the fire, she lowered herself into a chair. Antony needed no permission to sit, but he stood by choice, caged fury driving him to pace before he checked himself into stillness. This anger had burned brightly in him ever since Hipley confirmed his suspicion: there had been troublemakers at St. Albans, particularly around Edmund Ludlow, who argued for the purge. Lune had no messages from Cerenel since he fulfilled her final command, discovering Vidar’s presence in Fife, but it was easy enough to imagine what Nicneven had commanded her Lord of Shadows to do. Charles was humiliated; now he must be deposed.

Lune wondered how long it had been since Antony slept a full night through. But she could not reassure him into resting; there was no reassurance to be had. “Jurisdiction or not, they will do it,” she said. “I think you are right: this is no bluff. And they will find him guilty.”

“No, they will not.” Antony ground the words out. “We will stop them.”

“How?” She could not but pity the frustration that raged in him. “We have tried to move the people of London, to no avail. Their fear is too great, and their exhaustion.”

“Then we’ll try something else!” he shouted, whirling on her as if on an enemy. “You’re a faerie, God damn it; use your arts!”

The oath hit her like a blow to the gut, driving the wind from her lungs, the light from her eyes. The fire flickered low, and a tremor rocked the walls. Only a faint one; it was but a single word, and spoken in blasphemous anger, not prayer.

But it shook her to the bone.

When Lune’s vision cleared, she saw Antony’s white face mere inches away. He had her by the shoulders, steadying her. The iron wound throbbed under his hand. Then the door slammed open and a pair of attendants rushed in, wild and ready to fight off some assailant. Finding only the Prince, they faltered.

Marshaling her wits, Lune held up a shaking hand. “Be at ease—it was a slip of the tongue only. You need not be alarmed.”

They retired, uncertainly, and left her with Antony. “Forgive me,” he breathed. “I forgot myself.”

That he had done so showed the depth of his distress. Lune took his hands from her shoulders and held them in her own, looking down at him where he crouched on the carpet before her. “You are right,” she said, her voice coming to her ears as from a great distance. “I could save the King.”

His eyes widened. The velvet across his shoulders tightened, and he gripped her fingers hard. “I could,” Lune went on, “claim every piece of bread in the Onyx Hall, and arm a force of fae against the world above. I could send them to the King’s prison at Windsor Castle. They could mask themselves, beguile the guards, and spirit Charles away. With a friendly captain, we might get him to France. And then more charms might end the current chaos there and help Henrietta Maria persuade the French court to grant him the soldiers they refused before, which—with sufficient help at sea—might get through to England and make a third rising, more successful than his first two. And so the Army and this false Commons would be overthrown, and Charles restored to his throne.

“And if you ask it of me, I will do it.”

Her words hung in the quiet air.

Antony was staring, lips parted in shock. This was not how it went: they argued, each advocating for their own kind, resisting compromise but eventually finding it. That was how they ruled, as Queen and Prince.

Never had she offered him such a choice.

“It is not mine to decide,” Antony said, barely audible.

“It is,” Lune told him. “You are the Prince of the Stone. Yours is to say when the fae of this land can be of aid. Such things are, and always should be, your decision. I have forgotten that on occasion, but not now. If you wish the King rescued, then say so.”

She spoke it more easily than it came. Even as the possibilities rolled out, her mind filled in the consequences. But principles adhered to only when they were easy were no principles at all.

If the well-being of mortal England depended on this, then she would do it.

Antony rose, pulling his hands from her grasp, and moved back a few steps, the toes of his boots feeling for the floor as if leading a blind man. “If we had acted but a little more strongly, years ago,” he said, “we might have averted this by less extreme measures.”

Lune nodded, gut twisting with regret. “Had we foreseen where it would end. But I do not think anyone—perhaps not even a seer—could have predicted then that the innumerable branching paths of our choices would lead us to this pass.”

Our choices in the broadest sense. She and Antony were hardly the only ones who mattered, or even the most important. Pym had not anticipated this end, when he began his troublemaking in Parliament years ago. Nor had Charles, when he belittled the threat so posed; nor the Army officers who now roared for a trial. No one person, mortal or fae, had created the disaster that faced them now. They had done it together. And now only violent action would end it.

Her consort had closed his eyes in thought. “Your subjects,” Antony began, then corrected himself. “Our subjects would resent the forcible taxation of their scarce bread. And the Cour du Lys would scream in outrage at such trespass in France.”

Lune said nothing.

“Such conspicuous interference would threaten your safety as well,” he went on. “For you cannot charm so many men so entirely without it being marked. It might draw attention to this very Hall, and even if not, accusations of witchcraft would dog the King to the end of his days.”

Then he opened his eyes, and she saw the agony he had tried to conceal from her. “And in the end,” he said, “it would only confirm Charles’s invincible certainty that Heaven is on his side. The Almighty, not the people of England, has made him King, and no lesser force may deny him. He believes his failure in war is Heaven’s punishment for acceding to Strafford’s death, against his own sworn word. Last-minute salvation of such supernatural kind would be a sign that his penance is done. Once restored, he would thereafter reign in the absolute assurance that his power is divinely ordained. And he would be worse than ever.”

Laying her hands in stillness on her skirt, Lune said, “What is your wish?”

It surprised a bitter laugh from him. “My wish? For sanity and reason to return to this land. A King who heeds those below him, as well as the One above. And these past six years erased, as if they had never been. But you cannot offer me that; you can only offer this. And as generous as it is…” His breath came out in an anguished grunt. “No. We cannot rescue the King.”

Tears pricked her eyes unexpectedly. It was the sensible choice, the realistic one; the cost of acting would be too high. But some part of Antony had died when he made that decision, and she suspected it was the dreamer in him, the man who believed that working with the fae would help him transform his own world for the better.

They did not always rule in harmony, but she called him friend—and she grieved to see him change.

She rose from her chair and would have reached for his hands again, but he stepped away, armoring himself in stoicism. “We will continue to watch,” she said. “If a chance offers itself…”

“Indeed,” Antony said, but there was not much hope in his voice. “If it does, we shall be ready.”

WESTMINSTER HALL, WESTMINSTER: January 20, 1649

They could have held it at Windsor Castle, in far greater safety. But men who believed they enacted God’s will would not be satisfied with a circumspect execution of justice, out of the public eye; instead, they brought the grand delinquent of the kingdom to the very seat of his power. In the knife-edged cold of a Saturday morning, Antony, Kate, and Soame took a coach upriver to Westminster Hall, to witness the trial of the King.

Soldiers stood watch on the rooftops, repelling those who would have climbed up to peer through or even break the windows. A great mass of people waited for access to the floor of the hall, but Antony directed his coachman to a house abutting the eastern side. There he paid for the three of them to pass through onto one of the hastily constructed galleries inside the hall itself.

On the floor of the chamber, they had knocked down the partitions customarily separating the various courts that met there. Instead of claiming the middle of the hall, this great affair was wedged into the southern end, normally occupied by the Court of King’s Bench and the Court of Chancery. It weakened the spectacle—the common folk crowding in behind the wooden barriers would hear little and see less—but Antony, alert to possible dangers, understood. Ireton’s men had eschewed the safety of Windsor, but controlled what they could here. Few galleries meant fewer opportunities to shoot the participants.

Yet no one seemed to be weighing that threat today. The soldiers certainly knew where the gallery entrances were, but they made no move to search those who passed through. I could smuggle a pistol up here—even a musket—and no one would be the wiser.

If he believed it would do any good, he might have brought one.

They had come early, to ensure a place; now they waited, through the morning and into the afternoon. Kate, white-faced, made little conversation. Soame’s attempts at jests fell flat. Antony, for his own part, found himself praying—but for what, he did not know. Inarticulate pleas filled his mind.

The bells had just rung two when at last the doors were flung wide, admitting twenty halberdiers and officers bearing the ceremonial sword and mace. Behind them…

Scarcely half of the Commissioners had even come. Antony counted sixty-eight in total, though it was hard to be certain. They arrayed themselves on benches beneath the great south window, and one, in a black barrister’s gown, took the Lord President’s raised chair in the front row. “Bradshaw,” Soame muttered, and Antony nodded in recognition. The man used to be a judge in London, but he was hardly one of the great lights of English law. Every detail spoke the low character of this trial.

He hardly listened as the opening rituals were observed. While the halberdiers went to fetch the King, one of the clerks rose and droned through the roll call of Commissioners. Those who were present stood. But when the man called out, “Thomas Fairfax, Lord Fairfax of Cameron,” movement came, not from the Commissioners’ benches, but from the gallery in which Antony sat. A masked lady rose and shouted back in a furious voice, “He has more wit than to be here!”

Shocked murmurs rippled outward. On the floor, it seemed she had scarcely been heard; the clerk went on with the names. The lady shoved her way free of the crowd and vanished. “Lady Newburgh, I think,” Soame said in an undertone.

Antony shook his head. Lady Newburgh was an unabashed Royalist, true, but he knew that voice; he had approached her two weeks before, hoping through her to persuade her husband to denounce the actions of his Army. The speaker was Lady Fairfax, the general’s wife.

And then the hall fell silent—as silent as such a crowd could be—for the entrance of the King.

He did not come the length of the hall; they brought him through a side door, safely behind the barriers. From above, Antony could see little more than his black cloak and hat, and the radiant star that was the badge of the Garter. A red velvet chair had been set out for him, which he took with calm dignity, baring his face to his accusers and the spectators in the galleries.

The years of strife had been no kinder to Charles than anyone else. His hair and beard were solidly gray, and his eyes bore the shadows of a man who has not slept. But he showed no weariness as Bradshaw read his self-consciously formal statement. “Charles Stuart, King of England: the Commons of England, assembled in Parliament, being sensible of the great calamities that have been brought upon this nation and of the innocent blood that hath been shed in this nation, which are referred to you as the author if it; and according to that duty which they owe to God, to the nation, and to themselves, and according to that power and fundamental trust that is reposed in them by the people, have constituted this High Court of Justice before which you are now brought, and you are to hear your charge upon which the court will proceed.”

At Antony’s side, Kate shivered. He moved to put his arm around her, but she shrugged it off with stiff pride.

Below, they read out the charges. Charles was a tyrant and a murderer, and had subverted the fundamental laws of the realm; he had committed treason against his own people, all to glorify and exert his own will.

To which the King of England merely laughed.

His cause for humor was plain enough. When they finally gave him leave to speak, he replied clearly, without any hint of the stammer that normally impeded him. And with his first words, he cut straight to the heart of the matter. “I would know by what power I am called hither,” he said. “I would know by what authority—I mean lawful. There are many unlawful authorities in the world, thieves and robbers by the highway…”

What he said after that, Antony could not catch; there was noise and movement in the hall below. His heart leapt into his mouth, and he realized for the first time just how frightened he was. It seemed impossible that such events as these could proceed without dissolving into sheer anarchy and bloodshed.

But this was no hotheaded attempt to rescue or kill the King. Cries of “Justice!” arose in the crowd, as if by chance. “They planned that,” Antony murmured in Soame’s ear, and his friend grunted in agreement. The Puritans despised theater, but what was this if not a staged play?

The King, however, refused to follow the script. Batting aside Bradshaw’s weak counters, he hammered the point again and again, questioning the authority of the court, and asserting his right to ask that question.

Tom scowled. “Why does he not plead?” he demanded in an undertone. “Every time Bradshaw asks for his answer, he deflects it with more arguments—but a man who does not plead is assumed to be guilty!”

“Because to plead innocence or guilt is to grant legitimacy to this court,” Antony said.

“But it seals his fate. He could win on points of law, if only he would defend himself !”

Kate’s bitter laugh answered him, from Antony’s other side. “Do you think these men are concerned with the law? They answer to God, and none other. No defense would save him.”

Soame’s answering noise was pure, inarticulate frustration. “At least it would show how nonsensical these charges are!”

Nothing Antony had seen that day brought home the injustice of the trial more than hearing Soame—no friend to the King—condemn its conduct. Much of the behavior they named, Charles was guilty of, though perhaps not to such exaggerated extent. Yet it could not be termed criminal under the structure of English law; in prosecuting his transgressions, these men committed their own.

Kate was right: it had little or nothing to do with the law. “The people would not understand,” Antony said. “If Charles pleads his innocence, they will spend the next three days describing all his sins in exquisite detail. That is what the crowd would remember. He will not give them that opportunity.”

What they would remember, instead, was the King’s unflappable eloquence, not in his own defense, but in demolition of those who faced him. When Bradshaw called him “elected King,” Charles reminded him of the inheritance of English monarchy; when he asserted the authority of the Commons, the King pointed out the absence of the Lords, who were essential to the constitution of a Parliament. “You have shown no lawful authority to satisfy any reasonable man,” he said, and it was true.

A tight knot formed in Antony’s throat as he watched. He saw Charles with clear eyes; the events of the war had established all too clearly the man’s duplicity and arrogance. When he claimed to defend the liberties of the people, it was laughable—and yet, he might lay a greater claim to that defense than the men who now held England at the point of a blade. A tiny spark of respect flared in Antony’s heart, and he despised himself for it. But there it was: the man faced his judges, overriding their attempts to interrupt and silence him, with all the unshakable confidence of the martyr resigned to his fate.

He will not avert it, Antony realized, as Bradshaw finally lost his patience and ordered the soldiers to remove the King. And he knows it. But he will sell himself dearly, with words alone.

With the prisoner gone, the day’s work was ended; people began to depart. Kate stood unmoving at his side, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyes blazing with rage. “It’s a disgrace,” she said, when she saw Antony’s eyes on her.

“Yes,” he agreed, and took her arm gently. “And more disgrace to us, that we have fallen to such a state.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: January 26, 1649

Dejection weighed down Lune’s spirit like iron shackles, dragging at her steps as she paced restlessly from one side of the library to the other. The fae who frequented this room—scholarly sorts, uninterested in the active amusements of most courtiers—had been startled to see their Queen appear, and had ceded the chamber to her without pause. Lune herself rarely came here, and that was why she sought it now: for the unfamiliarity, for surroundings bare of all her usual comfort.

I have failed.

Failed Antony, failed England. Failed the promise made to an old woman decades ago. Not a vow, sworn on an ancient name of Faerie, but Lune had tried to behave as if it were. Yet it was just as well she had not so sworn: she could not defend England from itself. From a King so unworthy of his people; from subjects so unworthy of their land. Or from the faerie enemies who found and exploited those cracks, hammering at them until the whole of the state shattered.

In nearly sixty years on her throne, she had never faced a test such as this. And now that it had come, she failed.

So she came here, to keep company with her guilt. She could not share it with Antony, who bore so great a burden himself. Michael Deven, who would have comforted her, was dead—and a part of her was grateful he was not here to see this fall.

A knock at the door brought a snarl to her lips. Fae did not weary as mortals did; she’d shunned all attempts to bring her food, to make her sleep, until her ladies and her advisers understood that all she wished for was solitude. “Leave me be!”

Despite her command, the heavy oaken door swung open, admitting Lord Valentin Aspell and Sir Prigurd Nellt. They both went to their knees immediately, and her Lord Keeper said, “Your Grace, I most humbly beg your forgiveness for this disturbance.”

“You shall not have it,” she snapped, dashing wetness from her cheeks before it could be seen. “We wish to be left alone.”

“Madam, it concerns the safety of your realm.”

It might have been a leash, pulling tight about her neck. Lune’s body jerked, caught between a desire to strike him, and an impulse to flee. To go somewhere they could not find her and burden her with such news.

But duty was a bridle she had put on herself; she could not cast it off. Digging her nails into her palms, Lune said, “Tell me.”

Aspell visibly inhaled with relief. “An Islington lubberkin has brought word from an oak man north of the City. There were fae in his grove last night—foreigners. Perhaps as many as a dozen.”

Chilling as the words were, they concentrated her mind wonderfully. “The Scots.”

“I do not think so, madam. The oak man said they wore red armor.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, madam.”

Faerie knights painted and lacquered their armor, but according to their own tastes—usually. Red armor, in a group, pointed unerringly to one source. “Knights of the Red Branch,” Lune whispered.

Not Scots, but Irish. Ulstermen. The elite of King Conchobar’s warriors, as the Onyx Guard were of Lune’s. Ulster—the place to which Eochu Airt had returned so suddenly, not long ago. She doubted the two were unconnected.

But what purpose did they aim at? Lune’s eyes had been so firmly fixed on Scotland, she’d given Ireland little thought of late. Could it be—

Her heart leapt for one brief, foolish instant. Could it be they come to rescue the King?

Charles had been willing to promise the mortal Irish many things, in order to gain their aid in war. How much more might he give, in gratitude for his liberation?

But common sense asserted its leaden weight, reminding her of the obstacles that blocked the Red Branch, even as they blocked her. And surely Conchobar knew as well as she how little the King’s promises could be trusted. And—

And you have put the hounds in front of their prey, running madly off to nowhere. She had no reason to believe their intentions good, and more than enough caution to fear otherwise.

Aspell and Prigurd waited silently, breathing more easily now that she had not lashed out in anger. Strangely, her misery had subsided; it waited for her, too, but could not compete with the thoughts now racing through her mind. I must try to discover what the Red Branch intends in London—and in the meanwhile, prepare for the worst. “Lord Valentin,” she said. “Bid Lady Feidelm attend me in my privy chamber. Do not, however, say anything to her of the oak man’s message. Sir Prigurd—” The giant twitched, head still down. “Make certain that all entrances are under guard, by knights you can trust. If the Red Branch plans some assault or infiltration of our realm, we shall defend if necessary. But do not offer battle first. We may yet settle this peaceably.”

Peace was unlikely when the Ulster fae came in secret, not informing Temair’s ambassadress of their approach. But Conchobar was not Nicneven, and Lune would avoid having two such enemies if she could.

WESTMINSTER HALL, WESTMINSTER: January 27, 1649

Sunday was a day of rest; Monday and Tuesday were more of the same mockery as before. Bradshaw, it seemed, could not bring himself to believe that Charles would cling so stubbornly to his position, refusing, as always, to plead. Time and again they removed him forcibly from the hall, and with every repetition it proved the King’s point more: that their only authority lay in force of arms.

Antony’s words to Soame proved prophetic. On Wednesday the High Court summoned witnesses to testify before a committee, enumerating all the King’s sins, and the following day their statements were made public—but in the Painted Chamber, where the Commission met to debate, not in Westminster Hall. They could not conduct the trial as a trial. The King had barred that door.

Kate did not go with Antony to hear the session in the Painted Chamber. I should never have given her access to the printing press, he thought ruefully; in a few short months she had become a more prolific author of pamphlets than ever he was. London seemed snowed under by the competing publications, many of them openly against the trial. Yet it was still nothing more than words, and they held no more force than the ink used to print them.

On Saturday the High Court convened again, to pass sentence on the unrepentant King.

Antony saw Lady Fairfax slip into the gallery, masked once again, with a friend at her side. The declaration made against disturbances on the second day did not seem to have deterred her. When Bradshaw claimed once again to speak in the name of the people of England, she cried out once more: “Not half, not a quarter of the people of England. Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!”

“Down!” Antony snapped to Kate, almost before he registered the sudden move of the soldiers; half the gallery quailed as the Army men brought their muskets to bear. Half-crouching himself, he forced his way to the speaker’s side. “Lady Fairfax—”

She snarled a curse that never should have fouled the mouth of a lady, and desperate, he took her by the arm. “They will shoot!”

Lady Fairfax went with him, but not willingly. Outside, she lifted her chin and insisted, “I care not for their guns—but I would not endanger those around me.”

“I would your husband had your principles and courage,” Antony said, meeting her eyes, blazing like fire in her mask. “Had England more like you, she would rest far easier at night.”

The lady’s mouth wavered. “My husband is a good man.”

But rendered powerless by forces that had escaped all control. The Army no longer answered to him. Antony had no comfort to offer Lady Fairfax, and none for himself.

Back inside, he found confusion. The Commissioners were filing out, in less order than was their custom, and the people were muttering amongst themselves. “What’s going on?”

Tom shrugged. “The King requested a hearing before the Lords and Commons. Claimed he had something that might bring peace. Bradshaw refused it, and then the Commissioners began arguing; Cromwell himself went after the man who started it. Didn’t hear what they said, though. And now Bradshaw has called for a withdrawal.”

It lasted half an hour—an uneasy span of time. Antony had some experience of Oliver Cromwell in the Commons; the man was good at intimidation. And while he had not joined Ireton in purging the House, once Cromwell agreed to participate in this trial, his support had been steadfast. Whatever objection his fellow Commissioner might have raised, Antony doubted it would survive the confrontation now going on in private.

He was right. When the assembly returned, Tom muttered that the dissenter was missing, and Bradshaw denied Charles’s request for the hearing.

His address to the prisoner went on interminably, through a thicket of legal arguments and historical examples, most of which Antony could have dismantled in a heartbeat. Only one thing Bradshaw said struck him.

“There is a contract and a bargain made between a King and his people,” the red-robed Commissioner said. “The one tie, the one bond, is the bond of protection that is due from the sovereign; the other is the bond of subjection that is due from the subject. Sir, if this bond be once broken, farewell sovereignty!”

Such a world once existed, Antony thought sadly. But it is broken indeed.

Charles tried to interrupt, to respond, to answer the charges Bradshaw laid. After three painful days of his attacks, though, Bradshaw was not going to repeat the mistake of letting the King gain any footing. Rushing through his final points, he declared the prisoner guilty, and a clerk rose to read the sentence from a paper already prepared.

“The said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public enemy, shall be put to death, by the severing of his head from his body.”

In a solemn wave, the Commissioners rose, silently declaring their assent.

The words fell into Antony’s heart like drops of lead. Not deposition. Not imprisonment.

They will execute him.

From his seat on the floor of the hall, the King of England said mildly, “Will you hear me a word, sir?”

But Bradshaw would not. Sentenced to death, Charles was already dead, in the eyes of the law. A dead man could not speak. Heartsick, Antony saw the growing dismay on the King’s face as he realized his miscalculation. He had not understood; he had expected to have one more chance—not to change his sentence, but to give one last statement. His voice rose, higher and more desperate, as the guards closed around him like an iron gauntlet, as the Commissioners ignored his cries.

Grim in this, his ignominious defeat, Charles had his final word. “I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have.”

THE ONYX COURT, LONDON: January 30, 1649

“You cannot go,” Antony said, his voice flat and weary. “You cannot.”

Lune’s ladies were utterly silent as they carried out the task of dressing their mistress. They were not all needed—not for the plain gown Lune had ordered them to clothe her in—but they all stayed, the better to radiate their disapproval in harmony with the Prince. “Your authority, Lord Antony, extends to mortal affairs—not those of fae. Where we choose to go is our own concern.”

She should not have addressed him so formally, but her own temper was frayed beyond any chance of courtesy. As was his own, no doubt. Antony said through his teeth, “I give no commands, madam. I merely advise you that to leave your realm and go into such danger is unwise in the extreme.”

“I was once accounted quite good at this,” she said with some asperity, trying to make light of it. “You need not fear I will be found out.”

“Good or not, you propose to expose yourself to that which is anathema to you, with nothing to gain for it!”

A spark of rage flared in her heart. Did he think her entirely motivated by gain? Incapable of concerns beyond the betterment of her court? Amadea entered the room, bearing a crystalline coffer, but recoiled from the glare Lune laid on her. Free for the moment from her attendants, Lune turned to face her consort.

“I promised,” she said, forming each word precisely, “to protect England. Instead I have let her fall into the hands of a militant faction who discard her well-being in pursuit of their own interests. And so today they will cut the head from her King—a reigning monarch, tried and put to death by his own subjects.” Words were insufficient to contain her horror. Kings and queens had died before—deposed, abdicated, murdered without warning—but never like this. Never while on their thrones, under pretense of law.

Disguising what she felt was impossible; instead she used it as a weapon, letting Antony see. “I will not let this pass unwitnessed.”

He argues to preserve this realm—out of fear that something may befall me, and so both realms will crumble into chaos together. Robbed of his seat in Parliament, his position as alderman, his influence in his own world, Antony fought all the harder to preserve his other sovereign. She understood.

But I must do this.

At last Antony bowed his head. “Then come. The time grows short.”

WHITEHALL PALACE, WESTMINSTER: January 30, 1649

Silence reigned over King Street. Here and there a tearful, murmured prayer rose from hesitant lips, but the hundreds of people packing the road, leaning out of windows, perching on the roof, waited in grim and unnatural silence.

The Italianate expanse of the Banqueting House formed the background of the scene, a classical limestone island in the midst of Tudor brick. Black cloth draped the railings of the platform in front, concealing from those in the street the low block at its center, and the staples hammered into the boards around it. Should it prove necessary, they would chain the King to his scaffold, like a dog.

Tower Hill and Tyburn were both too large and open, too difficult to control. A vast mob had gathered to gloat over Strafford’s death; the men who now held England’s reins could not risk a similar mob turning against them. The confines of Whitehall Palace could be controlled, with the Banqueting House marking one side of King Street, the Tilt-yard the other, and Holbein Gate capping the southern end. An artillery platform left over from the wars, wedged in the corner by the scaffold, kept black watch over the street, and mounted soldiers ringed the scaffold, armored and armed. They would kill Charles outside his monument to beauty, Inigo Jones’s elegant architecture and Rubens’s transcendent ceiling within: an added twist of the knife.

The spare, ascetic woman at Antony’s side showed her years in her gray hairs and the worn lines of her face, and a hint of stiffness in her joints betrayed the encroachment of age. Lune had not exaggerated; she counterfeited humanity so well, he could not have told her for a fae. The three who accompanied her were easier to identify: Sir Prigurd Nellt was the enormous fellow with shoulders as wide as an axe handle, and the other two served in the Onyx Guard. Even now, dressed as humble tradesmen, they stood like knights—and faerie knights at that. The sober, Puritan dress they all wore was a thin mask. But no one’s eye would be on them today.

Kate had called Antony monstrous for attending, as if the grisly spectacle were his reason. The truth was that he could not let Lune come alone.

It was easy to think the elfin woman careless, even heartless. Together they had played the game of politics for so long he had lost sight of the truth: that Lune did care, as deeply as he. And this day might even hurt her more, for her dedication to the monarchy was born in a time when the monarch deserved the love of her servants.

Now, they might not have even an undeserving monarch. Earlier, one of Ben Hipley’s beggar-children informants had found Antony where he and the others waited on the steeply gabled roof above the artillery platform, overlooking the scaffold. The execution was delayed because the Commons was rushing a bill through, rendering it illegal for anyone to proclaim a new king. It was a defensive tactic, a futile attempt to protect themselves against Charles, the Prince of Wales, who was young, energetic, not hated as his father was, and roaming free on the Continent. But Antony feared they intended something more permanent.

Movement drew his eye. Men were filing out onto the scaffold: soldiers, a couple of fellows with inkhorns and paper, and the executioner, who along with his assistant was heavily disguised. The noble windows of the Banqueting House had mostly been blocked up, but one in the annex on the north side had been torn out and enlarged, and it was through this they came.

Whispers ran through the crowd, rippling the deadly tension. And then a gasp, as the King stepped into view.

He dressed plainly, his only jewel the George, the insignia of the Order of the Garter. He seemed composed, but asked one of the soldiers something with a nod toward the block. Though the crowd was fearfully quiet, a sharp wind blew, bringing winter’s bite and carrying Charles’s voice away. Even from his nearby position, Antony could only catch stray words; the rest of the onlookers, held back by the thick ring of mounted troops, would fare little better. When Charles drew a small paper from his pocket, he addressed his final speech to the men on the scaffold, the only ones who could hear him. But the men with the inkhorns took notes, and it would not be long before the King’s last words were published all over London.

I must get their notes, Antony thought, biting his lip. If they censor anything out—the people must have the truth.

With the help of the bishop who had accompanied him out of the Banqueting House, Charles donned a nightcap and tucked his hair inside, leaving his neck bare. What the bishop said to Charles was inaudible, but the King’s reply came in a stronger voice, carrying to the now almost perfectly silent crowd. “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be—no disturbance in the world.”

Antony’s stomach twisted in agony as the King removed the George and handed it to the bishop. “Remember,” Charles said, and Antony thought, Yes. I will remember forever this moment—when a man convinced that God has ordained his authority is murdered by men convinced that God has ordained theirs.

Always they laid it at the feet of the Almighty. Charles believed his defeat proof of God’s punishment. Parliament’s leaders believed their victory proof of God’s favor.

Or was it simply proof of Cromwell’s military genius, and the effectiveness of the New Model Army? What if all of this, every bit of it, was the work of men alone—their choices and mistakes, their dreams and ideals—and God watched it all play out, letting them rise and fall with neither aid nor hindrance?

Someone had to be wrong; God could not be on both sides. And watching Charles remove his doublet and cloak, watching him raise his hands in prayer and then lay himself flat with his head over the low block, Antony felt with cold certainty that both were wrong. God watched, nothing more. His hand was nowhere in this day—nor any other.

This is the doing of men.

A frozen, silent instant—then Charles stretched out his arms.

The axe flashed through the air, and a groan wrenched free of the crowd, horror too great for words.

The disguised executioner lifted up the severed head of the King by his hair, the nightcap tumbling to the boards. Weeping and praying filled the air as the soldiers dragged the body clear and loaded it into a coffin draped with black velvet.

Before they were even finished, a clatter broke the grief. Horsemen advanced from the far end of King Street and the interior side of Holbein Gate, not too fast, but with enough deliberate menace to achieve their aim: the people broke ranks and scattered as best they could. Some brave few dodged beneath the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood—a few even dared the soldiers by vaulting the railings—but most began to flee.

Even the rooftops were not safe. Shouts arose from the gate; turning, Antony saw soldiers climbing over the leads. They paid little notice to the people around them, though, instead moving forward with purpose.

His hand moved without him thinking, closing around Lune’s arm like steel. Then he realized she was looking the other way, toward the buildings that fronted the Privy Garden behind them—toward a second troop of soldiers, approaching from the other direction. And they, like the others, caught his eye in a way he had come to recognize.

Even before one of them pointed and called to his men, Antony knew their target.

“They—” Lune began to say, but he cut her off.

“Run.”

The Banqueting House rose to their right, but that would only trap them on the roofs. Discarding propriety and her pretense of age, Lune kilted up her skirts and leapt forward. Antony didn’t let himself think; he just followed her. For an instant he felt weightless; then the artillery platform below rushed up with terrible speed. White heat flared through his right knee as he hit and rolled to the side. It was more by accident than design that his momentum carried him off the boards and onto the street before the soldiers could recover from their surprise.

Lune heard his cry of pain and moved to help him. Antony shoved her forward. “Go!” She needed no second encouragement. Around the base of the scaffold, through the scattering crowds—a horse blocked their path and they dodged right, into the arch of the Court Gate and the Palace Court beyond it.

“Sir Prigurd—” Lune said, twisting to look back.

“Will buy time for us to get away. Those were fae, Lune, and I do not think they were yours.”

The Palace Court wasn’t empty. Nor were he and Lune the first to come through; ahead they saw other onlookers being wrestled aside by the soldiers stationed there. Antony swore a blistering oath and hurled himself left, into a narrow passageway that ran past the Comptroller’s rooms. Whitehall Palace was a God-forsaken maze; when the passage ended, they had to go right, into another courtyard.

One glance at Lune told him it had been too long since she came here; she was more lost than he. Praying his own memory served him correctly, Antony went left again, through an even narrower passage that twisted almost back on itself before ending in yet another courtyard.

But this one opened back onto King Street. They were far enough from the scaffold now that the soldiers paid them little mind, and the convolutions of Whitehall did them one service; their faerie pursuers had lost them for the moment.

He would not count them safe, though, until they reached the Onyx Hall. “The river,” Antony said.

Lune shook her head. “A wherry would make us easy targets. They’ll watch for that. Can you continue?”

“I will,” Antony said grimly, and limped toward Charing Cross.

WESTMINSTER AND LONDON: January 30, 1649

Something ached beneath Lune’s breastbone, deeper than grief or despair. She felt as if the ground beneath her might fall away at any moment, as if the world had lost some fundamental solidity.

The King is dead.

She hurried through the streets with Antony at her side and her eyes burned, dry and unblinking.

The King is dead.

It shivered through her marrow. The King is dead; long live the King—But no. By decree of Parliament, young Charles did not yet succeed to his father’s place. The throne was empty. It had sat empty before, between the death of one sovereign and the coronation of another, but that was a different suspension—the hesitation between one breath and the next. This was purgatory, without a promised end.

It meant nothing. The news would reach the Prince, the new King, soon enough; people would declare him regardless. He was King by the grace of God, not Parliament. Their law meant nothing.

And yet it meant far too much.

England had no King. And on some deep level, the spiritual bedrock of the land, that absence rang like a terrible brazen bell.

She could not afford to think on it, not until they reached safety, and they were not there yet. Despite the fierce cold, sweat stood out in beads on Antony’s face. She hadn’t stopped to think when she leapt from the roof; he was human, and no longer young. His limp worsened with every furlong, but he forced himself onward—now that she had made it clear she would not leave him behind.

The closest entrance was the only one to breach the City’s boundaries; the tunnel opened inside the wall, but gave out into the filth of the River Fleet. Even were she willing to brave that sewer, the hag of the Fleet might not let them pass. They would have to go through Ludgate to the Fish Street arch—

No. Feidelm had been unable to guess the purpose for which the Red Branch was sent to London, but it seemed clear they intended to strike at either Lune or Antony. Or both. Which meant, if they were clever, they would place a force at Ludgate, where the Queen and Prince would be most likely to pass.

How many knights had Conchobar sent? There had been eight at King Street. But the oak man might have seen only one group; there could be more. Surely, though, they could not be enough to guard all the entrances, or the gates into the City.

They were already on Fleet Street; she had to make a decision. Glancing at Antony, seeing his clenched jaw, Lune knew he could not make it to Islington and the Goodemeades. They would have to risk it.

“Follow me,” she said, and turned north on Fetter Lane. Passing the lesser Inns of Court, they crossed the Fleet at Turnagain Lane and came in through Newgate. The skin between her shoulder blades crawled, expecting an arrow at any moment, but none came. They reached the butchers’ shambles, and Lune helped Antony down the steps into a cellar that ceased to be a cellar as they traversed it.

Her breath came back in a great, relieved gasp when they reached the safety of home. The iron wound stabbed with new pain, and she had snapped the busk of her bodice in her landing; its broken ends ground into her stomach. Antony sagged against the wall, dead white save for the hectic flush in his cheeks, and did not even manage to straighten when the door banged open and admitted two armed knights.

Lune leapt in front of him, dropping her mortal guise. The pair who faced her stared in astonishment; she spoke before they could overcome it. “Come. Lord Antony needs help, and we are under attack.”

She blessed Valentin Aspell for disturbing her with news of the Red Branch; the Onyx Guard was prepared. These two, Essain and Mellehan, were newly recruited to its ranks, but they responded with alacrity. Mellehan helped Antony upright, supporting the mortal man’s bad side. “We’ve heard disturbances, your Majesty,” Essain said. “Your knights are gathering in your greater presence chamber—”

Lune swore foully. “Not at their posts? I gave orders to guard the entrances! Sir Prigurd is still outside—” They were a ragged procession, hurrying through the maze of galleries that led to her throne room, but it mattered little; there were no courtiers out to see. Ahead were the double doors, open for her already. “I do not know what our pursuers intend—”

The answer awaited her inside.

“Hello, Lune,” Ifarren Vidar said, from his comfortable seat on her throne.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: January 30, 1649

The bony, long-limbed fae looked like a spider, one arm and one leg draped over opposite sides of the silver throne. He sat without the cold grace of its former occupant, but his pale skin and black hair were all too similar; for one wrenching instant, Lune saw Invidiana.

She could not control her flinch, and it widened Vidar’s smile. Laughter came from the faerie lord’s right hand, breaking the spell; Lune realized Sir Leslic was standing with drawn sword, displaying a smile more like a snarl. Antony’s seat had been knocked down and shoved to one side, its cushion slashed in half. Leslic’s fellow prisoners also stood free, ranged about the dais.

That much Lune saw before she spun. But the doors were already swinging shut, and Essain was there, his sword leveled at her breast. “Do not, your Majesty.”

Mellehan still supported Antony, but with a dagger at his throat, while a goblin knotted a gag across his mouth. Lune met the Prince’s eyes briefly, and saw the confusion and horrified disbelief there. She could not answer him. Instead she pivoted back to face Ifarren Vidar.

Doing so, she marked for the first time the fae who stood along the walls of the presence chamber, beneath the silver filigree and crystal panels of the vaulted ceiling. Some—too many—were knights of her own Onyx Guard. But others…

Vidar’s narrow face split into a merciless smile. “Did you think the Scots my only allies? You have disappointed the Irish terribly, Lune. So many broken promises, so many missed opportunities. They desire an Onyx Court that will not hesitate to use every tool at its disposal.”

Nicneven lacked the might to attack. But others did not. Red Branch knights: Ulstermen, led by Eochu Airt. The former ambassador was there, standing well back from the drawn swords, out of possible danger. Now she understood why he had left her court. This had been planned for at least two months, and likely longer than that. But by Temair itself, or only King Conchobar of Ulster?

Surrounded by swords, and yet politics are all I can think of. Because they were the only weapon she had. Drawing herself up as if she cared not a rush for the blades all around her, Lune made herself meet Vidar’s gaze.

She had never known where he came from. Lune was not certain if he was even English. But the rumor was that he fled his original court after his ambition earned him the wrath of his lord, and she believed it. Ifarren Vidar would do anything to gain power. This was only the latest attempt—and, she feared, the most well laid.

“Is that what you have promised Ireland?” Lune asked. “That you will pressure me into greater support?” Her lip curled. “Of course not. You want what you have always wanted: the throne upon which you now sit. But you are not Invidiana, Vidar. You will never have the control she did.”

He was unperturbed. “I will do better than you, who cannot even control your own court.”

The doors swung open again. Lune did not turn; she would not show that fear. But she felt the tremors as heavy boots thudded against the marble behind her, and then all her attention went to a shadowed corner to Vidar’s left, where an enormous figure straightened and came forward into the light.

Kentigern Nellt, his giant form only barely constrained enough to fit into the presence chamber, halted with a vicious smile spreading over his ugly face. “Well done, brother.”

A pause—and then Sir Prigurd continued on past Lune, to stand at his brother’s side.

Pain lanced through her heart. Fully a dozen of her knights stood alongside the Scots and Irish, turncoats showing their true colors at last, but none of those grieved her like this one, which explained them all. New recruits, gathered over the decades since she took the throne, and all of them brought in by their captain, Sir Prigurd Nellt.

I should never have trusted him.

The giant she had thought loyal would not meet her eye; he stared shamefacedly at the black and white patterns of the floor. But he stood alongside his brother, and Lune did not know whether she wanted to weep or tear his throat out in rage.

She would have no chance to do either. “Kentigern wants blood,” Vidar said casually, standing. He had discarded the human fashions that curried favor in the Onyx Court, but not the black and silver he aped during Invidiana’s reign. One glittering, long-fingered hand smoothed the velvet of his tunic. “And he shall have it—starting with that mortal pet at your side. We have not yet decided what to do with you. It may be that her most gracious Majesty, the Gyre-Carling of Fife, will claim the right of your disposal. One English sovereign has died today; she may develop a taste for it. But all that shall wait until we have fully secured this palace. For now…” Vidar paused, ostentatiously savoring the words. “Take them both to the Tower.”

While Prigurd tied Lune’s hands behind her outside the presence chamber, Kentigern studied Antony with a cold, calculating eye. “He’s injured.”

“They escaped us at Whitehall,” Prigurd said, his voice a softer, higher bass than his brother’s. “Jumped off the roof.”

Antony stared fixedly past Kentigern, eyes hard over the gag muffling his mouth. If he felt fear, he did not show it. “Maybe we’ll wait,” Kentigern said. “Until he heals. No sport, otherwise.”

The amphitheater. It had seen bloody entertainments in Roman times, and would again. Antony would not last one pass against the giant—but Lune had no intention of letting that battle occur. They’re taking us to the Tower. How well do they know it? If their captors took them the right way—if she could buy even a moment’s freedom for herself and Antony—

She caught the bleak look in his eye, and shook her head minutely. A year ago, she never would have feared rash action on his part; Antony was not a rash man. Something had changed in him, though. Parts of him had broken, and more than just his old dreams. I cannot predict what he’ll do.

Whether he recognized her warning, let alone accepted it, she could not tell.

Vidar called from inside the presence chamber, and Kentigern grunted. Clapping his brother on the shoulder, he went back inside, leaving Prigurd, Essain, and Mellehan to escort the prisoners to the cells underneath the Tower of London. Bound and outnumbered, with Antony wounded and Lune no warrior, they were little enough threat—but still, the meager escort told her something. Vidar might have Scots from Nicneven’s court and Red Branch knights from Conchobar’s, but he did not have enough to spare Prigurd a larger guard.

The giant knew it, and wasted no time. Lune’s skirts tangled her legs as she hurried to keep up, since she could not lift them out of her way. Essain’s rapier pricked the small of her back every time she stumbled. Antony, favoring his hurt knee, fared worse. Even if she could break free of this guard—

The gallery they were traversing fronted onto one of the lesser gardens, where some courtier was fostering a splendid array of tulips. From the brilliant, many-colored froth of their petals came a voice, singing tunelessly but with strength, in a voice that made the walls tremble and the tulips wither in their urns. “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help.”

The psalm broke harmlessly over Lune, deflected by the tithe, but the other fae cried out. Whirling, she saw Mellehan drop his rapier, and Essain staggered. Lune thrust her hip beneath his, and sent him stumbling into his companion. Benjamin Hipley, still singing, appeared from behind a dying bush. “Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me…” He had no patience for the tactics of gentlemen; his hilt-weighted fist cracked Mellehan’s head, and then he disarmed Essain and clubbed him in the neck with the pommel of his own blade.

A basso growl brought Lune desperately around. Prigurd had collapsed to his knees, one broad hand planted on a pillar, but before he could struggle up again, Antony was there. Supporting his weight somehow on his bad leg, he kicked out, with enough force to knock the giant sideways, then staggered forward and slammed the same boot down.

His knee gave out from under him, but the work was done; Prigurd lay senseless on the floor. Hipley cut short his psalm. “Your Majesty—Lord Antony—”

“Help him,” Lune said, jerking her chin at the fallen man, and Hipley rushed to unbind his hands and mouth. Only now did her heartbeat catch up to the sudden excitement, pounding hard enough to make her shake. I should kill these knights.

It was a thought worthy of Invidiana. Vidar forced her back into those dark habits, the days when bloody ruthlessness was the only way to survive at court. Lune flung the notion from herself in revulsion. But half the Onyx Hall would have felt the force of Ben’s holy song; they had to move quickly.

Hipley came to untie her hands. Antony, supporting himself against the pillar, met Lune’s eyes again. More then twenty years they had reigned together; there were many things they need not say. “Go,” Lune told him. “Before they think to.”

“What of you?” Antony asked.

Her hands came free, and she chafed life back into her fingers. “Will you stay with me?” she asked their mortal spymaster, and Hipley nodded. “Vidar intends to take the Onyx Hall for himself. We must make certain he cannot.”

LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: January 30, 1649

Antony’s sweat-soaked clothing froze against his skin the moment he levered himself up out of the flagstone-capped pit. He thanked God—or rather, the power of Faerie—for the charms that concealed anyone entering or exiting one of the passages from the Onyx Hall, replaced the flagstone, and staggered grimly away from the Billingsgate house, toward Lombard Street.

With the Queen and the Prince captured, would Vidar still spare a force to patrol the streets in disguise? Perhaps, depending on how many more he needed to subdue. And if he guessed their escape, then definitely.

He limped faster.

O Lord, Almighty Father—I beg of You, protect those I love. If that usurper struck at more than the Onyx Hall—if they harmed her while I was gone—

The house was quiet, with candles burning against the early winter night. Antony heaved himself through the clerks’ office on the ground floor and up the stairs, gasping. “Kate? Kate!”

No answer. His breath coming faster, Antony made for the next floor. She could be out—

“Antony?”

Her clear, bright voice came from the top of the stairs. Then a sudden clatter as she rushed down them, slipping under his arm and supporting his weight. “What happened? I’ve been waiting—”

“Kate,” he said, pulling free of her so he could take her face in his numb hands. “We must leave. Now.”

She went perfectly silent and still. A hundred questions shouted in her eyes—what was wrong? Who was coming for them? What had he done? But her mind worked fast enough to recognize that if they were in danger, staying to ask why would only increase it. He loved his wife intensely for the good sense that made her say only, “Do I have time to prepare?”

I do not know. But a modicum of practicality won through; if they fled without any preparation, the bitter January night would kill them as surely as the fae. “Essentials only. Warm clothing, and coin. We’ll return for the rest later.”

I only pray we can.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: January 30, 1649

Shouts and the occasional feminine scream echoed through the stone reaches of the Onyx Hall. Perversely, they gave Lune hope. How many of her court remained loyal, she did not know, but it sounded as if Vidar was having to subdue more than a few.

Which meant he did not yet have the leisure to enjoy the spoils of his conquest.

She knew the faerie palace like she knew her own body, every passage and hidden door as familiar as her hands. Hipley, judging by the small noises that escaped him, never suspected the existence of half the paths they took. But otherwise he followed in silence, until Lune paused at what seemed to be a dead end.

She listened intently, but heard nothing from the other side. Empty? Or a trap?

Waiting would not improve her chances. Holding her breath, Lune pressed against the wall, and it slid aside, silent as only charmed stone could be.

The chamber beyond already glowed with faerie lights, illuminating the gathered treasures of the Onyx Court. Jewels and boxes and stranger things, most of them gifted during Invidiana’s reign, half of them unknown to Lune. Reluctant to touch them, she had never taken the time to discover their various purposes. But she had no eyes for them now; all she saw was the figure in the center of the room, clasping something to her body.

Amadea Shirrell gaped at the sight of her Queen, standing in the opening of the secret door. She had time for only one undignified squawk before Hipley was there, one hand clamped over her mouth; the other controlled the hilt of the sword she cradled in her arms.

The main door to this, the innermost treasury chamber, was already shut. Lune, coming forward, kept her voice low. “Lady Amadea. Do tell us—what did you intend with the London Sword?”

Warily, Hipley unclamped his hand. The Lady Chamberlain gulped and whispered, “Your Grace—they are saying the Scots have overrun the Onyx Hall. If it be so—I could not let this fall into their hands!”

She slipped free of Hipley’s grasp and knelt, offering the blade to Lune, gripping it by the sheath. Amadea offered no resistance when Lune took it from her. Hipley’s eyes were full of doubt, but Lune knew Vidar as he did not. Amadea was not his chosen kind of pawn.

“Get yourself to safety,” she told her Lady Chamberlain. “The Onyx Hall is not safe at present—but we will rectify that, never fear.”

Amadea rose, curtsied, and fled through the opening by which they had come, closing it behind her.

“Was that wise?” Hipley asked, then added as an afterthought, “Madam.”

“Guard the door,” was all Lune said, and turned to the case from which Amadea had taken the sword.

The weapon rested ordinarily in a glass-fronted box on the wall, nestled in blue velvet. Showing none of the care she had before, Lune dropped the blade she held, and ran her fingers along the oaken sides of the case, whispering under her breath the key.

The whole structure swung outward, glass, velvet, and all, revealing a niche carved into the stone behind. In that recess hung another sword: the exact duplicate, in every respect, of the one Amadea had come to rescue.

Lune breathed in relief, and lifted the true London Sword from its concealment.

The Onyx Court had other crown jewels, but none of equal significance. This was the blade that, drawn from the London Stone, had made her Queen; with it in her hands, some of the terrible uncertainty she had felt ever since Charles’s death receded. The Onyx Hall is still mine. Whether simple possession of the Sword would grant Vidar sovereignty, Lune didn’t know, but she did not intend to find out. Let him take the decoy, and think himself the victor.

I will take that from him soon enough.

Belted over her dress, the Sword looked less than dignified, but it would be too easy to snatch from her hands. With it secured, she swung the case back into position, then replaced the false blade in its velvet nest.

Behind her, she heard a faint, choking gurgle.

Nothing more. No sound of the door, no cry from Hipley. But when Lune turned, she found Sir Leslic standing over the threshold, pinning the intelligencer to the wall by a knife through his throat.

“My hat is off to you, madam,” the golden-haired elf-knight said ironically, not so much as touching his velvet cap. “I move quickly, but it seems you have me bested.” He pulled the dagger free, and Hipley crumpled to the floor. “Two swords? Very clever. Perhaps I shall let Vidar have the one on the wall, and keep the one you hold for myself.”

He would be on her before she could reach the secret door, let alone close it behind her. Hipley twitched, choking on his own blood; she would find no second salvation there.

Drawing the London Sword, Lune said, “You know what that requires.”

“Oh yes.” Leslic unsheathed his own rapier, and smiled murder at her. Pain flared from the iron wound. “Believe me, madam—it will be my pleasure.”

Then a foot of bloody silver punched through the front of his doublet. “No,” Cerenel said from behind him, “It will not. This, cur, is for the humiliation you forced upon me.”

Leslic opened his mouth—to reply, to scream—but never had a chance. Cerenel’s dagger hand flashed around, and blood cascaded from the traitor’s throat.

The tip of the London Sword threatened to waver as the knight pulled his rapier free and let Leslic’s corpse drop. Lune had no more notion of how to fence than she did of how to conduct a Catholic Mass: she had seen it done, but had no capacity for it herself. Perhaps it’s time I learned.

No goodwill warmed Cerenel’s eyes when he looked up. The oath bound him, but it could not command his heart. I should not have forced him, Lune thought. I have made of him an enemy, too—though one who must fight on my behalf.

She wanted to apologize for the necessity that had trapped him in Scotland these long years. She wanted to release him from his oath. But the latter would free him to turn on her; she could not afford such mercy. And the former, on its own, would be a mockery.

“You should go, madam,” he said with cold formality. “Vidar’s forces are moving to control the entrances; soon you will not be able to leave.”

Only those he knows of. Lune prayed she was right, that three remained a secret known only to a few. Regardless, she should hurry.

Stepping past Cerenel, she put her fingers to Hipley’s neck, but knew the answer before she did. “One more favor I will ask of you,” she said to the oathbound knight. She didn’t want to command him, but he was the only tool available to her now. “See to it that this man receives proper burial. Do not let Vidar’s people have him.”

“As you command, your Grace.” He bit the words off.

She would not force his loyalty any further. Lune waited until he was gone with Hipley’s body, then slipped back into the secret passage, the London Sword at her side.

THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: January 31, 1649

The group that gathered in front of the hearth was a small one, and dismal. Lady Ware waited upstairs, unaware that her husband sat in a faerie house below. The necessary tales had been told; now Lune sat, exhausted and blank, realizing the enormity of the disaster.

Charles dead. Herself dethroned. The two should not be connected; that bond was severed back in Elizabeth’s day. But the execution of the King cut far deeper than any faerie pact, into the heart of England itself. She could only guess at the consequences.

Guess, and try to find a way forward. But her mind refused to stir.

“There will be others,” Rosamund predicted, after a painfully long silence. “Loyal to you, that is, not—” She paused, blinking away tears for Ben Hipley, then went on. “Lady Amadea, for one. They’ll know to come here, as you did.”

“All the worse,” Antony said. His voice was harsh from weariness and suppressed grief. “Everyone knows this is a place of safety. It will not be long before Vidar thinks to look here.”

“We can turn him away—”

Lune shook her head, finding the energy to speak once more. “No, Rosamund. Your pretense of innocence will not be enough, not this time. Even if Vidar believes you outside of court politics, he knows my people will come to you. The only safety is for him to find no one here.”

Silence again. Even the crackling of the fire seemed subdued. Gertrude twisted her hands in her apron and said, “We can hide you—but that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

Lune stared into the flames. The London Sword lay across her knees, a heavy reminder. It must not fall into Vidar’s hands.

She’d been thinking in immediate terms since she fled Westminster. Evade pursuit; escape Vidar’s trap; protect the London Sword. But the immediate moment was past, and she could no longer avoid the truth.

“Whatever courtiers escape,” she said, “whoever is still loyal—they will not be enough. As we are…we cannot retake the Onyx Hall.”

Retake. Cold acknowledgment: she had lost the palace.

Gertrude’s breath caught. In her peripheral vision, Lune saw Rosamund touch her sister’s hand. There was nothing they could say. In one disastrous day, she had lost a war on two fronts; she had failed in every way as a Queen. She could protect no one, not Charles, not her subjects—not even her Prince.

Against her will, she lifted her gaze to meet Antony’s.

The strain showed on him, not just of this night, but of the years that brought them to it. What mortal wars and Army arrest could not manage, the faerie invasion had accomplished in a single night: it had driven Antony from his home. And it had very nearly killed him.

Once, Lune would have staked her life on his loyalty. But now…

If he leaves, I will not stop him.

He took a deep breath, and she saw him force weariness aside, taking up the duty that lay before him. “Then we must find you allies.”

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 1666 The Battle for the Stone

All through the night, London’s riverside has lain under the glow of a false dawn. Drifting smoke obscures the stars, and hides for a time the sun’s true approach to the horizon. But the day at last blooms gloriously bright, the firmament arching perfect blue over the Hell below.

At Queenhithe, men scurry like ants, frantically clearing the market square that sits at the harbor’s northern edge. Their defense at Three Cranes failed in the night, but now they have a second hope. Here, they need not tear down houses to make space; here, they may be able to check the Fire’s progress.

The Dragon watches their efforts and laughs.

It has children now, a hundred thousand sons and daughters, salamanders that race up the walls as they burn. They crawl under the roof tiles of houses, seeking out the tinder-dry timbers beneath, and latch onto the pitched gables. They burrow into cellars, creating nurseries of coal in which their siblings are born. The men of London fight not one beast, but many, all driven by the same corporate purpose. They are legion.

Now the Fire gathers its children for the assault.

Blazing flakes dance on the unceasing wind. Most die, but not all. And twenty houses distant, down the length of Thames Street as yet unburned, another building sends up a finger of smoke.

The men weep in despair as the Queenhithe gap is bridged, and the Dragon roars in triumph.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: ten o’clock in the morning

Wrapped in her cloak, with red flannel petticoats bulking out her skirt like a London goodwife’s in winter, Lune gathered her lieutenants for their commands.

“In one sense only,” she said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering, “this Fire may prove a blessing. Even Nicneven’s people cannot walk through the inferno.” Sun and Moon, I hope they cannot. “If it continues to spread—as we must assume it will—then the entrances it overtakes will not need to be guarded.”

Sir Peregrin’s elegant features had lost much of their handsome cast to haggard wear, but the knight had strength at his core; he bore up under the Cailleach’s assault better than Lune expected. He was still alert enough to foresee a problem. “When it reaches those points—what then? Will it break through to us below?”

That very fear had paralyzed Lune in the night, before the Fire itself delivered the answer. “Cloak Lane is gone already,” she said. Along with the Cutlers’ Hall, the Post Office, and everything else in its vicinity. The downfall of churches was another disguised blessing for the fae, but not one she rejoiced over. “You see, Sir Peregrin, that we are still here.”

Her advisers breathed more easily. Lune herself was not so easy; would the entrance still function when the buildings that had comprised it were replaced? The men above were slowing the Dragon’s progress, but she feared the Onyx Hall would lose more doors before the Fire was quenched.

“We must keep every entrance under watch,” she reiterated, trying not to dwell on the last time she gave such an order. If she could not trust her guard now, then she truly was doomed. “From below. My previous orders stand.” There was little bread to steal regardless, but desperation flooded the palace. If she did not find some means of protecting her people, they would soon flee, church bells, iron, and Fire be damned.

The captain bowed and left at a run. “Amadea,” Lune said, and her chamberlain jerked upright. Where Peregrin withstood the cold and terror, the gentle lady did not. She had passed beyond merely haggard, now resembling an ambulant corpse. “Gather everyone together. I leave it to you as to where; some place large enough to hold everyone. But not the greater presence chamber.” They would offer some resistance if Nicneven’s people did penetrate the Hall, but Lune refused to go that far. If it comes to such a pass, I will give the Gyre-Carling what she desires, no matter the consequences for myself, or even the Onyx Hall. I will not throw all my subjects’ lives away.

“To what end, madam?” Amadea asked, an indistinct mumble from lips that quivered with fear. Lune blinked in surprise. She had thought it obvious—but not, clearly, to the Lady Chamberlain. Not in her state.

“For warmth,” Lune said gently. “It should help some. We do ourselves no favors, scattering about the palace as we do.” Letting them dwell on thoughts of dying, alone.

A silent tear rolled down the lady’s cheek. “It will not save us.”

No, it will not. But Lune could hardly admit the truth: that it was a tactical delay, something to keep her people’s minds off death while she searched in desperation for a way to stop the Cailleach and the Dragon both.

Gentleness was not what Amadea needed. Lune glared until she had the Lady Chamberlain’s attention; then she bit off her command, not blinking. “We did not ask for your opinion, and the giving of it wastes our time—which should be better employed in carrying out our next plans. Gather them. We shall see to the defeat of our enemy.”

It got the lady on her feet and out the door, which was enough; that Amadea had forgotten to curtsy was an insolence Lune believed unintended. Amadea’s shoes scraped along the floor in leaving, as if she could barely muster the will to lift them. I would rather she obey then spend her strength in courtesies.

She disposed of her remaining advisers, giving more commands of little use. They were distractions, nothing more—not just for them, but for herself.

Lune did not want to face the possibility of flight.

The Onyx Hall was her blood and bone, the second skin her spirit wore. She’d fled it once, and the bitter memory would gall her until the end of her days.

I will not run a second time.

Lune extended her senses into the palace, not flinching from the crippling cold. Frost rimed the stones, and the arching ribs of the ceilings grew teeth of ice. The floor ached under her feet. There must be some way to protect the palace, to close it off such that even the Cailleach’s breath could not penetrate, and they could wait out Nicneven’s patience. This was a seige—one where the resource to be hoarded was not food or clean water, but warmth.

There was warmth in plenty above. Too much. The inescapable heat of the Fire, grinding its way down Cannon Street—

A spike of transcendent agony pierced her soul.

When her vision cleared, she was running, staggering into the icy walls like a drunkard, feet tangling in her layered petticoats. She fell and bruised her hands, but was up again before the pain registered, weeping, gasping, desperate to reach her target in time.

I am a fool.

Down the length of the great presence chamber, forcing her throne aside with a strength she did not know she had, hurling herself into the alcove behind it, and then her hand struck the rough surface of the London Stone.

All the fury of the Fire roared into her body. She smelled scorching flesh, but the seared skin of her palm was a tiny cry against the scream of the Onyx Hall.

The Dragon could burn the entrances and it wouldn’t matter, because they were secondary things, insignificant to the Hall itself. But this, the London Stone, standing amidst flames in Cannon Street above—this was the axis, the palace’s heart, the key to all that lay below.

Stone could not burn. But it could crack and crumble, and it could convey heat from one world into the other. That was its purpose: as above, so below.

Locking her teeth tight against her scream, Lune held on.

ALDERSGATE, LONDON: eleven o’clock in the morning

Half-blind with exhaustion and heat, Jack lurched around a cart that had stopped in the middle of St. Martin’s Lane to be loaded with a frightened tradesman’s worldly possessions. Damned fool. The Fire is not yet here. But perhaps the man was simply more prudent than most. The snarl of London’s streets had stopped practically all movement dead; it might take the cart half the day to move the short distance to Aldersgate, the rest of the day to pass through. By then, who knew where the Fire would be?

Moving into the middle of the street, he tripped over an obstruction, keeping his feet only because there was no space to fall. Jack swore and looked down to discover that someone had torn up the kennel at the center of the lane, exposing the elm wood of the water pipe beneath. Exposing—and cutting into.

“God’s rot! Lack-brained whoreson cullies—the Fire is nowhere near you! ” Jack bellowed, to no one in particular. Whatever panicked knave had cut open the pipe, no doubt to douse his own shop in protection, the ass had probably long since fled. No wonder there was so little water coming to the conduits farther down in the City. Jack had no doubt this same crime had been repeated elsewhere. Between that and the drought that had withered the City’s wells, they had scarcely any water at all.

He tried to master his rage. All was not lost. The King had come to support his people again, and left behind his brother the Duke of York to take command of their efforts. Under that generalship, a semblance of order was coming to the war.

The fire-post up ahead was one of the duke’s creations, and a beacon of sanity amidst the howling chaos of the gate. Jack forced his way over to it; the soldiers let him pass, recognizing him for one of the men assembled by the parish constables. Beyond, he collapsed without dignity against a wall, and soon someone pressed a pewter tankard into his hand. Looking up, Jack found himself at the feet of the Earl of Craven.

He scrambled upright again, or tried to; the earl pressed him down. “Take your rest, lad,” Craven advised him. “You need it.”

I’m twenty-six, Jack wanted to say, but one did not argue with a peer, especially one to whom he was a lad. Instead, he stayed obediently where he was, and choked on his first sip of beer. I know that taste. It seemed the Angel Inn was supplying at least one fire-post. Strength spread through his tired body, from his gut outward; the Goodemeades knew what they were about.

From where he sat, the Fire did not look like much. A thick pall of smoke streamed eastward under the impetus of the wind, but beneath it, there was scarcely a glow. God, in His irony, had given them a perfectly clear day, the sun dwarfing all the Fire’s rage.

Jack was not fooled, and neither was any other man with enough wit to breathe. The riverside blaze had been bad enough, but it kept expanding northward. And with every yard it shifted in that direction, it gave itself a broader front: more territory for them to contest, and more edge on which the wind could find purchase. For every yard northward, the Fire would claim three to the west. God alone knew how much of London it would devour before it was done.

If only we did not have the wind…

How far dared he push Lune? He knew the gist of what Ifarren Vidar had done; the faerie lord was undoubtedly the Queen’s enemy. Yet she insisted on keeping him from the Gyre-Carling, even in the teeth of the Cailleach Bheur. She must have some reason for it.

That much, Jack understood. What he did not understand was what reason could be worth sacrificing London for.

He became aware of voices to his right, saying something about Lombard Street. Jack drained the last of the Goodemeades’ beer and pushed himself up. Didn’t even need the wall to help me. How long the strength from that draught would last, he didn’t know, but for now it would do. “My lord,” he said, approaching the earl and a pair of other men, “can I be of service?”

Craven studied him consideringly. “The Fire is moving up through St. Clement’s, Nicholas, and Abchurch Lanes,” he said at last. “One arm of it, at least.”

Toward Lombard, and the houses owned by wealthy merchants and bankers. Who would not appreciate their homes burning down, but would be equally angered to hear of their deliberate destruction. It would be easy to believe, after the fact, that the Fire might have been stopped short of that point, and their belongings saved. Jack raked one filthy hand through his hair and thought. With the wind as it was…“My lord,” he said, “I don’t think we could halt it there regardless. But there are two stone churches on the south side of Cornhill, that might serve as a bulwark; if we create a break there, we might have a chance.”

One of the others said, “That would permit the Fire too close to the Exchange.”

“Permit?” Craven said, with a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “When we have the power to command this blaze, then we may speak of permitting it things. For now…Dr. Ellin is right. Send word to the duke, but I think we must make our defense at Cornhill.”

Jack startled at the sound of his name. To Craven’s weary smile, he said, “I didn’t think you would remember me, my lord.”

“I remember all men who stand up in defense of London’s people,” the earl said. Which sounded noble, even if it were exaggeration. Craven had been one of the few peers who didn’t flee before the plague last year, instead staying to manage the efforts against it. If he’d earned Jack’s eternal gratitude and respect then, it was confirmed now, as the old man placed himself once more in the path of disaster.

Craven clapped him on the shoulder. “Do not overreach yourself,” he said, with a wry twist that said he also remembered how faint a mark such advice left on Jack. “We have hours more to fight before we can think of victory, and we need every man we can muster.”

Jack nodded, but Craven was scarcely out of sight before the physician took to his heels. If the Cornhill break were to be created in time, they would need every hand they could get.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: noon

Real heat would have burned Lune’s body to ash by now. She was aware of that much, even if she did not know how much time had passed. As it was, the power of the Fire struck, not at her physical flesh, but at her spirit, which struggled to contain it: to keep it from spilling over into the Onyx Hall. Caught between shattering cold and melting flame, the palace would be destroyed.

The bitter irony of it choked her, in the one tiny portion of her mind that could think of anything other than forcing back the heat. The Dragon was not Nicneven’s creature, but in its quest to devour the City, it would do the Gyre-Carling’s work.

Unless she stopped it. With her hand on the keystone of the Onyx Hall, Lune could keep the devastation above from passing below. But for how long? Could she hold until Cannon Street was reduced to cinders, with nothing left to burn? The creeping demise of age the Cailleach whispered in her heart was drowned out, transformed into a raging death, a swift immolation no less dreadful for its speed. She’d put herself in its path; now she could not back away, and and it might kill her.

No. Lune’s joints ached from the strain, but she held. Dying would save no one; it was her life they needed. Her presence here, with her hand on the Stone, holding back the inferno. Whatever it cost her in pain and blood, she would pay it. I would give my life for my realm. I can give this, too.

It was nothing more than nature, simple flame, the London Stone above standing like an altar in a cathedral of coals. The flames, Lune could hold back.

But even as the Fire’s edge moved onward, something shifted in its heart, and a terrible awareness fell upon Lune.

She choked on her own breath, quailing beneath that hellish gaze. Until now, the Dragon’s attention had flickered here and there, diverted by each fresh victim, each challenge mustered by the City’s defenders. It saw only what it devoured, and what yet lay in its path.

It had not looked below.

The cataclysmic power turned inward. Even as tongues of flame licked out, the inexorable progress slowed by men’s efforts but never halted, the Dragon itself cast a curious eye upon the London Stone. That unassuming limestone block held something different, something more, that the beast had not noticed when it took Cannon Street into its maw.

Lune’s rigid body jerked. She strove desperately to conceal herself somehow, and with her, the Onyx Hall. It could not be done. A probing tendril of awareness snaked down through the Stone, and found her in its path.

Curiosity became avarice, and all-consuming hunger.

Here was a prize more glorious than the one Father Thames had barred, a mirror to the realm already under the Fire’s claws. Here was a place of power. If the pitch and oil of London’s wharves had given birth to the Dragon, the enchantments of the Onyx Hall could make of it a god, against which all the efforts of mere humans would be as nothing.

In a molten voice that boiled all the blood in Lune’s veins, the Fire snarled, This will be mine.

Its claws flexed within her gut, and it began to pull.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: one o’clock in the afternoon

Irrith hesitated outside the Fish Street arch for several minutes before forcing herself through. Familiarity did not make the Cailleach’s icy touch any easier to bear; she dreaded it more with every encounter. Perhaps some of the London fae helping Jack Ellin were there because they loved their City; all Irrith cared about was escape.

But that wasn’t true. She gave it the lie the moment she passed through the blackness of the arch, as she did every time she bore a message between the Queen and the Prince, every time she turned her thoughts and efforts to battling the Fire instead of fleeing back home to Berkshire. She dared not examine her reasons too closely, for fear they would dissolve into senseless panic, but they propelled her onward nonetheless.

Still, she gasped in horror as the Hag’s cold breath penetrated her flesh. All the vital spark of her immortal life dimmed, becoming something fragile and vulnerable. She thought of the disaster above: collapsing houses, choking smoke, stampeding mortals running like rats to save their tiny lives. A thousand and one ways to die. Fast or slow, in pain or in black unconsciousness, it didn’t matter; in the end, she would be snuffed out, as easily as a candle.

Irrith tasted blood. She had stifled her scream with a fist, and bit down so hard she broke the skin. Spitting, she made herself straighten from her instinctive crouch. The fae above—more than six of them, now; others had come to join the fight, or at least to escape the wind—needed instruction from the Queen. Angrisla was frighting people from their houses, when they would stay past the point of safety; Tom Toggin was shepherding children separated from their parents; they were all helping in their own ways. But it was like carrying water in a sieve: the few drops that shifted made scant difference against the whole.

The sprite put her head down and drove herself onward. Much of the Onyx Hall was still a maze to her, a labyrinth full of dark secrets, but she knew the major ways well enough to keep her path without having to look. Arriving in the council chamber, however, she found it echoing and empty, holding only the pierced arc of Amadea’s fan. Irrith stared dully at the makeshift map, trying not to imagine her own body pierced by a blade; there were roving bands of women in the streets above, some of them armed, seeking out anyone who wore strange dress or spoke English badly. Foreigners had been attacked all over. A few were in prison now. Others were dead.

Death came so easily, with so little warning.

Breath ragged in her chest, Irrith dug her broken nails into her scalp. “Stop it,” she whispered, teeth grating until her jaw ached. “Find the Queen.”

Not only could she not find Lune; she could not find anyone. The Onyx Hall might have been an unpopulated grave. Had they all fled, without telling her? Fury at that thought gave Irrith a little defense against the cold—so long as she did not think of dying here, alone. She tried the Queen’s bedchamber, without luck, and the night garden. All the flowers there had shivered into black, brittle stalks, and dead leaves carpeted the ground. It was the one place that had felt like home to Irrith, and she ran from it, weeping.

Her shoulder slammed into a wall, checking her flight. She was near the greater presence chamber now, and still no sight of anyone. But she heard a strangled cry.

Irrith’s heart leapt. Company, any company, would be a blessing, a minute consolation that all the world had not perished. Shivering, she ducked through the great doors.

The chamber was empty, and its black heights gave no solace. The crystal panes stretching between the arches of the ceiling gleamed opaque with ice. Frost coated the silver throne at the far end, and so it took a moment for Irrith to realize the great chair had been shifted askew.

She crossed the patterned floor on feet gone numb, now dreading what she might find. The sounds coming from behind the throne hurt just to hear. She had to look, though; she had to know.

Curling her fingers around the freezing metal, Irrith peeked into the space beyond.

Hope surged at the sight of Lune. Why the Queen was here, hidden behind her throne, standing on some kind of platform with one hand on a pitted block of limestone, Irrith couldn’t begin to guess, but at least she was here. Not everyone was gone.

Then she felt the heat flooding the alcove.

There was no comfort in it. Earlier that morning, Irrith had found herself caught between two horns of the Fire, trapped between a pair of burning houses, the hot air searing her lungs. This was worse. This destruction had awareness.

Another broken groan escaped Lune, and her fingers whitened on the stone. Her silver hair hung lank about her face, all the curls blasted out, and her head sagged as if she could not keep it up. Something fell from behind that curtain, sizzling where it struck the wooden planks, leaving a scorch mark on their surface.

She was weeping tears of fire.

A new sound reached Irrith’s ears: a high-pitched moan, a wordless cry of terror. Only when Lune twitched did the sprite realize it came from her own throat. The Queen’s other hand jerked upward, searching blindly; she knew someone else was there. Irrith almost reached for her, then held herself back. The power suffusing Lune would destroy anyone who touched her.

“What can I do?” she whimpered, fighting not to flee.

The reply came out in a parched whisper, torn from the depths of Lune’s body.

“Find. Jack.”

LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: two o’clock in the afternoon

His own coughing woke him. Ash coated Jack’s mouth and throat; he hacked, body convulsing, to expel it and draw clean air.

But clean air was nowhere to be found. More ash and smoke came in with every breath, and desiccating heat seared his lungs. The dirt beneath him was baked dry, cobbles like a griddle on which he roasted. Jack heaved himself upward, but made it only halfway before his elbows and knees gave out, dropping him once more. The effort advanced him a foot or two, though, and so he kept trying, lurching by this crippled means away from the danger that threatened him.

For he had woken in a narrow alley between two houses, both of them alight. When Jack made it to the dubious safety of the street, he found that much of Lombard was in flames, its defenders fled. The signs marking the houses of the wealthy burnt like witches on their pyres: the Golden Fleece, the Fox, the White Hart. Jack might have been in a painting of Judgment Day, showing the fate of worldly riches.

A fate that would soon be his, if he didn’t move. Fear and the occasional gust of cooler air helped him gain his feet, and he staggered at a half-run toward the untouched part of the street. How had he come to be in that alley? His searching fingers found a lump on his head. Attacked? No—he had fallen, he remembered his knees giving out…

Despite the fire all around, he found himself shivering. Plague-high fever gripped his body; he had just enough wit left to recognize that. His vision swam. Exhaustion from the heat—Craven was right, he overreached himself. To the point of collapse. He had to reach a fire-post—Cripplegate was nearest—take some rest, away from the battle. He hadn’t slept the previous night, and unconsciousness didn’t count.

A flicker of movement. A slender body arrowed through the smoke, ghostlike and low. Jack recognized Lune’s hound by its red ears. A faerie hound, here in the City, and undisguised; and judging by its behavior, looking for him.

The dog ran a swift circuit around the Prince. Turning to follow its path, Jack almost collapsed again. I’m delirious. Or dead, and the hound has come to take me to Hell. Then it was gone, leaving him sure it had never been there at all.

“My lord!” The cry came from ahead. That, he did not imagine; a lithe figure darted his way, shouting his fae title for all the world to hear. Irrith made a strange-looking boy, but she could hardly run about as a girl, and God in Heaven, the hound was leading her.

Can’t even think straight. Jack tried to clear his mind, and the effort distracted him from his feet. He would have measured his length on the cobbles if Irrith hadn’t caught him.

“Where have you been ?” the sprite demanded, still shouting, as if she were not six inches from his ear. “I’ve been searching—”

The fever wracked his whole body in a shudder. More than exhaustion. I cannot have the plague, can I? The thought terrified him. But surely he would have noticed the other signs—would he not? Some other illness, perhaps, though few came on so quickly…

“Jack!” His name brought him back to his senses. Irrith gripped him by the jaw, forcing him to look at her. “You have to come. It may already be too late.”

“Too late?” Barely even a whisper. How long had he lain there, while the Fire drew ever closer?

“It’s the Queen,” Irrith said. “She needs you. Now.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: two o’clock in the afternoon

The well in Threadneedle Street was mobbed, walled in by carts and constantly in use by the men fighting the fire; Jack and Irrith had to fight their way to Ketton Street instead, and the entrance there. The cold hit him like a hammer as he passed below, and for the first time he grasped some measure of its horror for the fae. The Cailleach’s merest touch reminded him how close he’d come to death, and it set off a paroxysm of shivering that nearly dropped him. “No time for that!” Irrith insisted, dragging him along bodily. Now they were once more within the Hag’s reach, she avoided touching his skin, but she was no less effective for that. “It’s already been too long—I couldn’t find you; if it weren’t for the Queen’s hound—”

“Lune,” Jack managed, through his chattering teeth. “What?”

“I don’t know. But she told me to get you.”

The sprite pulled him into the great presence chamber. Jack guessed where they were going even before he saw the throne knocked from its place; Cannon Street had fallen to the Fire hours ago. And now that he turned his thoughts to the London Stone—

“Up!” Irrith screamed at him. Ice seared his cheek with cold; he’d collapsed to the floor. Not a fever. Not from illness. It was Lune. They were bound to one another, through the Stone, and though she held back everything she could to protect his fragile mortality, it spilled over. Even as the Dragon forced itself downward, it also was draining her, draining the Onyx Hall itself, feeding on the power it found there, and her strength to battle it was fading fast.

Irrith didn’t have to pull him up. Jack sought Lune as unerringly as the hound sought him—and what he found stopped him dead on the threshold.

The very air crackled and spat sparks. Her hair floated in a radiant nimbus about her body, drifting on the heated currents, its silver burning gold. Flames danced along the hem of her skirts, up the panes of her sleeves. He could not approach within two steps; the inferno she contained drove him back.

“Lune,” he whispered, and her head snapped up.

The silver eyes were molten flame, windows to the fire within. Any mortal creature would have been annihilated by the power she held; even immortal flesh could not withstand it forever. “Jack,” she answered him, and her mouth might have been the entrance to a forge, with Hell’s coals inside.

He almost prayed, and choked it down in time.

“The power,” she said, her voice cracking and spitting. Each gust of air tried to drive him back, out of the alcove containing the Stone. He couldn’t even see her hand, buried in incandescent light surrounding the rock above. “The Dragon’s. In me. It must… be sent…elsewhere.”

God Almighty, yes. Before it destroyed her. Jack didn’t let himself consider the possibility that he was already too late for that.

But where? Not the City above; that was where it came from. He didn’t think they could force the power into the areas already consumed, and if they tried, it might just explode outward to the parts still untouched. And with the Tower so close—they hadn’t yet cleared all the gunpowder out. That would destroy the City.

Nowhere that people lived. The Thames? The river’s spirit was already exhausted. Throwing the power there could well boil all the waters away, and once again it would make their situation worse, rather than better.

He wished it were possible to fling the Fire’s heat all the way to the sea, where English ships still battled the Dutch, ignorant of the disaster at home. But even if he could, he would not; the Dutch didn’t deserve to be obliterated without warning, simply for the crime of contending with the English over shipping.

Lune cried out, and the air blazed white. The tendons stood out in her neck as she clenched her jaw and fought it down. The very sight hurt Jack, his own fevered body aching in response.

“Hurry,” Irrith breathed, from where she crouched by his feet.

Think! Jack pressed his hands against his head, as if they could hold his mind together through the delirium that crippled it. Fire. Heat. Destruction. There was no safe outlet for such a thing.

But fire is more than that.

The fever carried him onward. Fire. Promethean, illuminative. Generative. Fire was the spark of life, as well as the immolation of death. There is something there, I know it—

If we could just transmute it.

Jack had never been more than a brief dabbler in alchemy. And this was no place nor time for arcane experiments with prima materia and alembics; he needed something simpler. Some way to transform the fire in Lune to a safer form.

He couldn’t even come near her. If he touched her, he might well go up in flames on the spot.

But he had only the one idea, and doubted he had time to think of another. The tips of Lune’s hair were smoldering. It was either try his idea and die, or stand around a moment longer and die.

“I hope this works,” Jack muttered, and leapt up onto the platform with Lune.

Fire went out of Lune in a rush, draining away with terrifying speed to someone else, then reflecting back into her like the sudden inflow of the tide. As if lightning-struck, her body went rigid.

Sun and Moon—

Passion the likes of which Lune had not known for decades flared through her body, making her gasp. Pain receded, and in its wake came desire.

Her skin ached with it, flooding all her senses. No lover had woken her so strongly, not since Michael Deven had died. Lune wept, remembering the treasured hands, lost to her forever. Her sense of self threatened to dissolve into the drowning wave of grief. So easy to let go, to release herself into oblivion…and that was what the Cailleach and the Dragon wanted her to do. To die. To end at last the long immortality of her existence, and let herself be destroyed.

But no. Forced down into the core of her soul by the twin assaults, she found a cool stillness there, free from fire and the Hag’s wintry cold. This is who I am. Child of the moon, timeless and serene. She lost that serenity so easily now, caught up in politics, imitating humans so fervently in their intrigues. But she was more than that—more than just spying and plotting and passing the time in frivolous pursuits.

Leslic’s Ascendants were right. Fae had once been more, but those who dwelt in the cracks of the mortal world forgot it in their fascination with humans. For this one eternal moment, Lune was as she had been.

Then, rising with newfound strength, she surfaced to find herself answered by the brief, bright heat of another. Not the Fire: a mortal flicker. A lively mind, an intellect driven by curiosity and compassion, the desire to gain knowledge and then turn it to useful ends. This is who he is. Sun to her Moon. Opposite, but not opposed. Alchemical complements, joined into a single, transcendent whole, burning with the fire of life instead of death.

Thought vanished into ecstasy that went beyond mere flesh.

They came to their senses once more to find the power transformed, obedient to their shaping wills. Still too strong, too much for safety; it would crush them if they held on. It had to go somewhere else.

Together, they reached out into their second body. The Onyx Hall, frozen under the cold of the Cailleach Bheur. Most parts lay empty, but there—in the amphitheater, crouching together on the white sand, the withering remnants of their court.

Gently, Lune whispered, and she and Jack breathed life into the fae.

Heads rose from their exhausted droops. Eyes brightened. Shoulders straightened. Slowly, carefully, the Queen and the Prince filled their people with life-giving fire, armoring them against the Cailleach’s chill. A glow spread through the amphitheater, casting sharp-edged shadows from the stone seats. The sand baked as if warmed by the sun it had not seen for centuries. Still haggard, but with newfound strength, the fae of the Onyx Court rose to their feet, ready to fight for their home.

For the Dragon’s power was all stolen. From the flames’ humble origins in Thomas Farynor’s bakery to the birth of the Dragon in the mighty conflagration of the wharves, the Fire was composed of stolen London, timber and plaster rendered into flame. Now that essence, safely transmuted, brought the faerie folk of the City alive—and ready to face their enemy above.

The inferno that would scour the Onyx Hall to its farthest corners had vanished, but the Dragon was still there, draining power from the palace to feed its raging flames. The Hall was a fathomless well, from which it had drunk only the first drops. Already it was stronger.

Lune had not been able to close the portal against it, for the Stone did not answer to faerie touch alone. But now Jack’s hand joined hers on the rough surface, and together they gathered the last of the fire, that they had kept for themselves.

Not here, they said, and sealed the London Stone, leaving the Dragon to roar its frustration in the street above.

Sensation returned to Lune’s flesh, and for the first time in who knew how long, it was all her own.

The cool stillness in her heart was fading, that perfect sense of who she was. Not gone—but she had made her choice, ages past, to forgo what she had been, what she might still be if she left the mortal world behind, instead of dwelling in this place. She made that choice when she first came to London, and again when she became Queen; she made it every day she remained here, living an imitation of mortal life.

It was not a choice Lune regretted. And the time had come to return.

Her eyes blinked open, and she found herself staring at Jack’s ear.

The Prince of the Stone startled and pulled back from the kiss. His free arm was still around her waist; the platform beneath the Stone was small enough that they could barely fit, otherwise. “I,” he said, and stopped as if he had no idea what he was going to say. “Er.”

The memory of passion still warmed Lune’s body, the incandescent pleasure that had inundated them both. It was a strange thing, a catalyst to transmute the Dragon’s power from death to life, but now the purpose for which it had been created was done. Do I desire him still?

No. What they had shared—the power they had tamed—did not constrain her heart. Lune no more loved the man before her now than she had yesterday. But she would carry the remembrance of that transforming fire for ages to come.

As would he, she suspected. He was actually blushing. Jack disentangled his arm and stepped back, not meeting her eyes. Lune caught his sleeve with her own free hand and said, “You saved my life. You have nothing to apologize for.”

Jack met her gaze sheepishly—a look that flashed to instant concern as she brought her other hand down.

The skin of Lune’s palm and fingers was blistered and charred. Her hand had cramped into the position it held on the Stone, but she felt no pain; she felt nothing at all, as Jack took it in his own, cradling it with a physician’s delicacy. The flesh might have belonged to another.

“Lune,” he whispered, but she cut him off.

“Bind it if you must; it will make little difference. The scars will remain.” An ordinary burn might answer to treatment, but not one inflicted by the Dragon.

He gave her a horrified look. Lune pulled her numb hand from his grasp and descended toward the door, where Irrith gaped at them both. The Cailleach had begun as a threat to the world below, and the Dragon to that above, but both now breached those bounds. What touched one world touched the other, and it would take mortals and fae to answer them both.

“Come,” Lune said. “We have a City to defend.”

At Leadenhall, they have their first victory.

The day has been one of mounting losses. The statues of England’s sovereigns that lined the Royal Exchange have toppled to the ground; the pepper and spices stored below now cloy the smoke. The grocers and apothecaries along Bucklersbury have added their drugs to the choking air. Baynard’s Castle has caught, the City’s old fortress burning like a torch in the night sky, the western foot of a blazing arch stretching from Blackfriars to Threadneedle, and down again to Billingsgate.

But at Leadenhall, the Fire is stopped. Someone with the appearance of an alderman throws coins in the street, promising them to any man who stays to fight. The western front is damaged, but the interior, holding the fabulous wealth of the East India Company, survives unscathed.

The Dragon snarls, robbed of its prey.

But now it has sampled the riches below. The power stolen from London’s shadow fuels its flames, and it craves more. The little openings it consumes are too strait and narrow to grant more than the most tantalizing taste, but it senses two others, both great and vulnerable. One lies to the west.

It will ride the wind to that place, and make its conquest complete.