Midnight Never Come

Act Five

The long gallery is lined from end to end with tapestries, each one a marvel of rich silk and intricate detail, limned in gold and silver thread. The figures in them seem to watch, unblinkingly pitiless, as he stumbles by them, barefoot, without his doublet, his torn shirt pulled askew. His lips ache cruelly. There is no one present to witness his suffering, but the embroidered eyes weigh on him, a silent and judgmental audience.

He spins without warning, shoulders thrown back, to tell the figures in the tapestries they must leave him be — but the words never leave his mouth.

The scene that has arrested his attention might depict anyone. Some faerie legend, some ancient lord whose name has escaped his mind, slipping through the cracks and holes like so much else. But his eye is transfixed by the two central images: a lone swordsman in a field, gazing at the moon high above.

His bruised lips part as he stares at those two. The broken spaces of his mind fill suddenly with a barrage of other pictures.

He sees another Queen. A canopy of roses. A winter garden. A stool, alone in a room. Lightning, splitting the sky. A loaf of bread. A sword, clutched in a pale hand. Two figures on a horse.

Shattered crystal, littering the floor, and an empty throne.

He presses one hand to his mouth, trembling.

He has seen it before. Not these same images, but other possibilities, other people. They have not come to pass. But who knows how far in the future a vision may lie? Who is to say whether one might not yet become true?

Some of those he has seen lie dead now. Or so he thinks. He has lost all grip on time; past, present, and future long since ceased to hold any meaning. He does not age, and neither does she, and it is always night below. There is no anchor for his mind, to make events proceed in their natural order, first cause, then effect.

It may be nothing more than the desperate hope of his heart. But he clings to it, for he has so little else. And he will bury this new one with the others, so deep that even he will not recall it, for that is the only way to keep such things from her.

She has gotten some of them. Or will get them. That is why those people are dead, or will be.

But not him. Never him. She will never let him go.

He tugs the tattered remains of his shirt about himself and hurries away from the tapestries. Must not be seen looking at them. Must not give her that hint.

Someday, perhaps, he will see one of these visions come to pass.

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: May 6, 1590

Deven thought, a little wildly, God have mercy. I’m bringing a faerie woman to church.

By her expression, Lune might have been thinking the same thing. Mindful of how the stone would carry her voice, she murmured acidly, “Do you expect some priest here to stop her?”

“No. But at the very least, we are less likely to be overheard within these walls.” One hand on her elbow, he pulled her farther down the nave. Outside, the churchyard echoed with its usual clamor, booksellers and bookbuyers and men looking for work. The vaulting interior of the cathedral somehow remained untouched by it all, a small island of sanctity in the midst of commerce.

“We can still come inside, when prepared; you yourself have seen me at chapel.”

“True. But I doubt your kind wander in idly.” Deven broke off as one of the cathedral canons passed by, giving him an odd look.

Without realizing it, he had led them to an all-too-familiar spot. Lune was not paying attention; she did not seem to notice that the magnificent tomb nearby contained not just Sir Philip Sidney, but his erstwhile father-in-law Walsingham.

Deven pulled up short, turning her to face him. “Now, tell me true. Do you think it mere chance, that your seer spoke that line? If you have any doubts… ”

Lune shook her head. She still appeared a common maidservant, but he no longer had any difficulty imagining her true face behind it, silver hair and all. “I do not. I even thought, at the time, that he sounded sane… I simply could not make sense of the words. And I know of no power our kind possess to effect such a change, against the force of the curse.”

He had hoped she would say it was a lunatic idea. Hoped for it, but not expected it.

“How do we break such a pact?” she whispered. She looked lost, stumbled without warning into a realm alien to her faerie nature. “Mere prayer will not do it. And I doubt she would stand still for an exorcism — if such would even touch her.”

Despite his resolution not to draw her attention to his dead master, Deven found himself looking at the tomb that held Walsingham’s body. Puritan belief was strong against them, Lune had said; Puritan, and Catholic. He was not on good terms with any Catholics. And he could not possibly ask Beale for help with this.

No, not Beale. The realization came upon him like a blessing from God.

“Angels,” Deven said. “To break a pact with the devil… one would need an angel.”

Lune’s face paled as she followed his logic. “Dee.”

The old astrologer, the Queen’s philosopher. How many of the stories were true? “They say he speaks with angels.”

“Or devils.”

“I do not think so,” Deven replied, soberly. “Not from what I saw of him… he might have feigned piety, of course. But can you think of one better?”

She wanted to; he could see her trying, calling up and then discarding names, one by one. “No.”

Now Deven regretted his contrived visit of a few weeks before; how would he look, a supposedly lovestruck fool, coming back and asking for aid against a faerie queen? His audience with Elizabeth would seem simple by comparison. But Dee had been a faithful supporter of Elizabeth since even before her accession; it should be possible to convince him to act against her enemy, however strange that enemy might be. And Walsingham had set him on this road — though the Principal Secretary could not have guessed where it would lead.

“I’ll go to him,” Deven promised. “Without delay. You… ”

“Will warn the Goodemeades.”

He could not quite suppress his ironic smile. “They have set a few pigeons to shadow me; one should be at my house. ’Twill carry a message, if you can find paper—”

Her own mouth quirked, and he remembered what lay outside the cathedral doors.

“’Twill carry a message to them,” he finished lamely.

Then they stood in awkward silence, the shared tomb of Sidney and Walsingham a mute presence beside them.

At last Lune said, the words coming out stiffly, “Be careful as you ride. They know who you are.”

“I know,” he replied. They stood only a step apart; the intervening space was both a yawning gulf, and intimately close. He would have taken Anne’s hands, but what would Lune make of such a gesture? “Have a care for yourself. ’Tis you who must go into the viper’s den, not I.”

Lune smiled grimly and moved past him, heading for the cathedral doors. “I have lived with the viper for years. And I am not without my own sting.”

QUEENHITHE WARD, LONDON: May 6, 1590

Only after Lune was gone did Deven realize he had left his sleeves behind at the house. No wonder the canon had stared.

He needed to put himself together properly if he was to visit Dee. He needed Colsey; he needed his horse. The previous day had left the pieces of his ordinary life scattered around London like debris after a storm.

Assembling himself again took until the afternoon. Colsey was mutinously silent while tending his master, no doubt anticipating what would come; he did not even blink when Deven said, “I must go alone.”

“Again.”

“Yes.” Deven hesitated. How much could he say? Not much. He laid one hand on Colsey’s shoulder and promised, “This will be over soon.”

Ranwell had readied his black stallion for some reason; the warhorse stood rock still as he mounted. The day was half-spent. He would spend the other half getting to Mortlake, and hope Dee granted him an audience at the end of it. At least he would be out of London, with no faerie palace lurking beneath his feet.

The congestion of the city’s streets had never irritated him so much. He should have gone west, made for the horse ferry at Fulham, but by the time he thought of it he was halfway to the bridge, with no point in backtracking. A cart in the process of unloading had mostly blocked Fish Street ahead of him; standing briefly in his stirrups, Deven scowled at the ensuing knot, as people tried to edge by. Then he cast a sideways glance at a narrow, lamp-lit lane whose name he did not recall. If memory served, it ran through to Thames Street.

Turning the black stallion’s head, he edged behind a heavily laden porter and into the lane.

Lamplight marked his way through the shadows. The lane brought him into a small courtyard, not Thames Street, but on the far side there was an archway, and his horse paced toward it without needing to be nudged. The lamp hovered above that arch, but did nothing to touch the darkness within….

“Master! Don’t follow the light!”

Irritation seized him. What was Colsey doing, following against his orders? He turned in his saddle to reprimand the servant, and found himself crying out instead. “Ware!”

Colsey leapt to the side just in time to dodge the grasping hands of the man behind him. A strange man, clad in nothing more than a brief loincloth and sandals, but broad-shouldered and muscled like a wrestler. He was unarmed, though, and in the close confines of the courtyard, he would be easy enough to ride down.

Except that Deven’s horse stood like a rock when he jerked at the reins, heedless of his master’s command.

And when he tried to swing his leg over the saddle, to go to Colsey’s aid, he found himself rooted as if his feet were tied to the stirrups.

The strange, eldritch light hovered and pulsed as he fought to free himself. Across the way, Colsey slashed out with his knife at the half-naked stranger, who parried his blows and stalked him with hands spread wide. Christ above, the horse wasn’t his; how had he ever mistaken it for his own stallion?

Christ. “In the name of the Lord God,” Deven snarled, “release me!”

The animal bucked with apocalyptic force, hurling him through the air and into the wall of a neighboring house. All the air was driven from Deven’s lungs, and he crashed heavily to the dirt below. But he untangled himself and lurched to his feet in time to see the creature shuddering and writhing into a two-legged shape, a man with a shock of black hair and large, crushing teeth.

The stranger fighting Colsey was blocking the exit to Fish Street — Deven no longer felt the slightest urge to go through the black archway at the other end — and as he looked, the man seized Colsey’s knife hand and twisted it cruelly. The servant cried out and dropped his dagger.

Deven charged toward them, but his sword was only half-clear of its sheath when something cannoned into him from the side. The horse-thing knocked him into the wall again, and Deven gasped for air. Reflex saved him; he kept drawing and now had three feet of steel to keep the creature from him. It danced back, suddenly wary.

Colsey had broken free, but now he was unarmed. “Get to the street!” Deven shouted, or tried to; the words rasped painfully out of him. If Colsey could rouse some kind of aid—

Except that Colsey shook his head and backed up two steps, retreating toward Deven’s side. “Damn your eyes,” Deven snarled, “do as I say!”

“And leave you with yonder two? With the greatest respect, master, shove it.” Colsey made a swift lunge, but not toward their opponents. Deven’s own knife whisked clear of its sheath, into the servant’s hand.

They had another weapon, though, better than steel. “By the most Holy Trinity,” Deven said, advancing a step, “by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—”

He got no farther. Because although the horse-thing shrank back and the hovering light snuffed out as if it had never been, the strange man charged in without flinching.

His bulk bowled Colsey away from Deven’s side, dividing them again. Deven lunged, but retracted it as the stranger whirled to grab for his arm; he dared not lose hold of his sword. Then the horse-thing was there again, kicking out and getting stabbed for his pains, and Colsey circled with his opponent, slashing with the knife to keep him at bay.

But not well enough. The stranger stepped in behind a slash, closing with the servant. A swift kick to the back of the leg dropped Colsey to one knee, and then the broad, hard hands closed around his head.

The crack echoed from the walls of the small courtyard. Deven crossed the intervening space in an eyeblink, but too late; Colsey’s limp body dropped to the ground even as his master’s blade scored a line across the back of his murderer. And the stranger did not seem to care. He turned with a feral grin and said, “Come on, then,” and spread his killing hands wide.

The horse-thing faded back, clutching his wounded side and seeming glad to leave this fight to its partner. Deven focused on the man before him. The tip of his blade flickered out, once, twice, a third time, but the stranger dodged with breathtaking speed, more than a fellow of his size should possess. “Drop the sword,” the stranger suggested, with a grin of feral pleasure. “Face me like a proper man.”

Deven had no interest in playing games. He advanced rapidly, trying to pin the man against a wall where he could not dodge, but his opponent sidestepped and moved to grab his arm again. Deven slammed his elbow into the other man’s cheek, but the stranger barely blinked. Then they were moving, back across the courtyard, not so much advancing or retreating as whirling around in a constantly shifting spiral, the stranger trying to close and get a hold on him, Deven trying to keep him at range. He wounded the man a second time, a third, but nothing seemed to do more than bleed him; the grin got wilder, the movements faster. Jesu, what was he?

They were almost to the courtyard entrance. Then Deven’s footing betrayed him, his ankle turning on an uneven patch of ground, and what should have been a lunge became a stagger, his sword point dropping to strike the dirt.

And a sandaled foot descended on it from above, snapping the steel just above the hilt.

A calloused hand smashed into his jaw, knocking him backward. Deven punched out with the useless hilt and connected with ribs, but he had lost the advantage of reach; an instant later, the man was behind him, locking him into a choke hold. Gasping, Deven reversed his grip and stabbed blindly backward, gouging the broken tip into flesh.

The stranger ignored that wound, as he had ignored all others.

The world was fading, bright lights dancing with blackness. The hilt fell from his nerveless fingers. Deven reached up, trying to find something to claw, but there was no strength in his arms. The last thing he heard was a faint, mocking laugh in his ear.

TURNAGAIN LANE, BY THE RIVER FLEET: May 6, 1590

The sluggish waters of the Fleet reeked, even up here by Holborn Bridge, before it passed the prison and the workhouse of Bridewell and so on down to the Thames. It was an ill-aspected river, and always had been; again and again the mortals tried to cleanse it and make its course wholesome once more, and always it reverted to filth. Lune had once been unfortunate enough to see the hag of the Fleet. Ever since then, she kept her distance.

Except when she had no choice.

The alehouse her instructions had told her to find was a dubious place in Turnagain Lane, frequented by the kind of human refuse that clustered around the feet of London, begging for scraps. She had disguised herself as an older woman, and was glad of her choice; a maiden wouldn’t have made it through the door.

She had been given no description, but the man she sought was easy enough to find; he was the one with the wooden posture and the disdainful sneer on his face.

Lune slipped into a seat across from him, and wasted no time with preliminaries. “What do you want from me?”

The glamoured Vidar tsked at her. “No patience, and no manners, I see.”

She had barely sent word off to the Goodemeades when Vidar’s own messenger found her. The added delay worried her, and for more than one reason: not only might Invidiana wonder at her absence, but the secrecy of this meeting with Vidar meant he had not called her for official business.

She had not forgotten what she owed him.

But she could use that to her advantage, if only a little. “Do you want the Queen to know of this conference? ’Tis best for us both that we be quick about it.”

How had he ever managed his extended masquerade as Gilbert Gifford? Vidar sat stiffly, like a man dressed up in doublet and hose that did not fit him, and were soiled besides. Lune supposed the preferment he got from it had been motive enough to endure. Though he had been squandering that preferment of late; she had not seen him at court in days.

Vidar’s discomfort underscored the mystery of his absence. “Very well,” he said, dropping his guise of carelessness. What lay beneath was ugly. “The time has come for you to repay that which you owe.”

“You amaze me,” Lune said dryly. She had made no oath to be polite about it.

He leaned in closer. The face he had chosen to wear was sallow and ill shaven, in keeping with the tenor of the alehouse; he had forgotten, however, to make it smell. “You will keep silent,” Vidar growled, “regarding any other agents of the Wild Hunt you may uncover at court.”

Lune stared at him, momentarily forgetting to breathe.

“As I kept silent for you,” he said, spitting the words out one by one, “so you shall for me. Nor, by the vow you swore, will you let any hint of this matter leak to the Queen — by any route. Do you understand me?”

Corr. No wonder Vidar had been so absent of late; he must have feared what Invidiana would uncover about the dead knight… and about him.

Sun and Moon — what was he planning?

Lune swallowed the question, and her rudeness. “I understand you very well, my lord.”

“Good.” Vidar leaned back and scowled at her. “Then get you gone. I relish your company no more than you relish mine.”

That command, she was glad to obey.

FARRINGDON WARD WITHIN, LONDON: May 6, 1590

Her quickest path back to the Onyx Hall led through Newgate, and she walked it with her mind not more than a tenth on her surroundings, working through the implications of Vidar’s demand.

He must have formed an alliance with the Hunt. But why? Had he given up all hope of claiming Invidiana’s throne for himself? Knowing what she did now, Lune could not conceive of those exiled kings permitting someone to take the usurper’s place. If he thought he could double-cross them…

She was not more than ten feet from the Hall entrance in the St. Nicholas Shambles when screeching diverted her attention.

Fear made her heart stutter. In her preoccupation, someone might have crept up on her with ease, and now her nerves all leapt into readiness. No one did more than eye her warily, though, wondering why she had started in the middle of the street.

The noise didn’t come from a person. It came from a jay perched on the eave of a building just in front of the concealed entrance. And it was staring straight at her.

Watching it, Lune came forward a few careful steps.

Wings flapped wildly as the jay launched itself at her face, screaming its rasping cry. She flinched back, hands coming up to ward her eyes, but it wasn’t attacking; it just battered about her head, all feathers and noise.

She had not the gift of speaking with birds. It could have been saying anything, or nothing.

But it seemed very determined to keep her from the entrance to the Onyx Hall — and she did know someone who might have sent it.

Lune retreated a few steps, ignoring the staring butchers that lined both sides of the shambles, and held up one hand. Now that she had backed away, the jay quieted, landing on her outstretched finger.

Something in her message must have panicked the Goodemeades. But what?

She dared not go to them to ask. She had to hide herself, and then get word to the sisters. Not caring how it seemed to onlookers, Lune cupped the bird in her hands, closing her fingers around its wings, and hurried back out through Newgate, wondering where — if anywhere — would be safe.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: May 7, 1590

Instinct stopped him just before he would have moved.

He could feel ropes binding his ankles together, his arms behind him. The stone beneath him was cold and smooth. In the instant when he awoke, before he shut his eyes again, he saw a floor of polished black and white and gray. The air on his skin, ghosting through the rents in his clothing, was cool and dry.

He knew where he was. But he needed to know more.

Footsteps tapped a measured beat on the stone behind him. Deven kept his body limp and his eyes shut. Let them think him still unconscious.

Then he began to move, without a single hand touching him.

Deven felt his body float up into the air and pivot so that he hung upright, facing the other direction. His arms ached at the change in position, cold and cramped from the ropes and the stone. Then a voice spoke, as cool and dangerous as silk over steel. “Cease your feigning, and look at me.”

For a moment he considered disobeying. But what would it gain him?

Deven opened his eyes.

The breath rushed out of him in a sigh. Oh, Heaven save me…. They had spoken of her beauty, but words could not frame it. All the poetry devoted to Elizabeth, all the soaring, extravagant compliments, comparing her to the most glorious goddesses of paganism — every shred of it should have been directed here, to this woman. Not the slightest imperfection or mark interrupted the alabaster smoothness of her skin. Her eyes were like black diamonds, her hair like ink. High cheekbones, delicately arched brows, lips of a crimson hue both forbidding and inviting…

The words tore their way free of him, driven by some dying instinct of self-preservation. “God in Heaven…”

But she did not flinch back. Those red lips parted in an arrogant laugh. “Do you think me so weak? I do not fear your God, Master Deven.”

If she did not fear the Almighty, still His name had given Deven strength. He wrenched his gaze away, sweating. They had spoken of Invidiana’s beauty, but he had imagined her to be like Lune.

She was nothing like Lune.

“You are not surprised,” Invidiana said, musingly. “Few men would awake in a faerie palace and be unamazed. I took you for bait, but you are more than that, are you not, Master Deven? You are the accomplice of that traitor, Lune.”

How much did she know?

How much could he keep from her?

“Say rather her thrall,” Deven spat, still not looking at her. “I care nothing for your politics. Free me from her, and I will trouble you no more.”

Another laugh, this one bidding fair to draw blood by sound alone. “Oh, indeed. ’Tis a pity, Master Deven, that I did not have Achilles steal you sooner. A man who so readily resorts to lies and deception, manipulation and bluff, could well deserve a place in my court. I might have made a pet of you.

“But the time for such things has passed.” The idle amusement of her voice hardened. “I have a use for you. And if that use should fail… you will provide me with other entertainment.”

Deven shuddered uncontrollably, hearing the promise in those words.

“You are my guest, Master Deven.” Now it was mock courtesy, as disturbing as everything else. “I would give you free run of my domain, but I fear some of my courtiers do not always distinguish guests from playthings. For your own safety, I must take precautions.”

The force that held him suspended now lowered him. The toes of his boots touched the floor; then she pushed him farther, until he knelt on the stone, arms still bound behind his back.

His head was dragged forward again; he could not help but look.

Invidiana was lifting a jewel free of her bodice. He had a glimpse of a black diamond housed in silver, edged with smaller gems; then he tried to flinch back and failed as her hand came toward his face.

The metal was cool against his skin, and did not warm at the contact. An instant later Deven shuddered again, as six sharp points dug into his skin, just short of drawing blood.

“This ban I lay upon thee, Michael Deven,” Invidiana murmured, the melody of her voice lending horror to her words. “Thou wilt not depart from this chamber by any portal that exists or might be made, nor send messages out by any means; nor wilt move in violence against me, lest thou die.”

Every vein in his body ran with ice. Deven’s teeth clenched shut, his jaw aching with sudden strain, while six points of fire fixed into the skin of his brow.

Then it was gone.

Invidiana replaced the gem, smiling, and the bonds holding him fell away.

“Welcome, Master Deven, to the Onyx Hall.”

DEAD MAN’S PLACE, SOUTHWARK: May 7, 1590

There was something grimly appropriate, Lune thought, about hiding a stone’s throw from an Episcopal prison full of heretics.

But Southwark was a good place for hiding; with its stews and bear-baiting, its prisons and general licentiousness, a woman on her own, renting out a room for a short and indefinite period of time, was nothing out of the ordinary way. Lune would simply have to be gone before her faerie gold — or rather, silver — turned back to leaves.

Had the jay in truth belonged to the Goodemeades? Or had it taken her message to another? Would the Goodmeades come? What had happened, that they were so determined to keep her from the Onyx Hall?

Footsteps on the stair; she tensed, hands reaching for weapons she did not have or know how to use. Then a soft voice outside: “My lady? Let us in.”

Trying not to shake with relief, Lune unbarred the door.

The Goodemeades slipped inside and shut it behind them. “Oh, my lady,” Gertrude said, rushing forward to clasp her hands, “I am so sorry. We did not know until too late!”

“About the pact?” Lune asked. She knew even as she said the words that wasn’t it, but her mind had so fixated on it, she could not think what Gertrude meant.

Rosamund laid a gentle hand on her arm. The touch alone said too much. “Master Deven,” the brownie said. “She has taken him.”

There was no refuge in confusion, no stay of understanding while Lune asked what she meant. Fury began instantly, a slow boil in her heart. “I trusted you to warn him. He’s as much in danger as I; why did you warn only me?”

The sisters exchanged confused looks. Then Rosamund said, “My lady… the birds stopped you of their own accord. Her people ambushed him on the street yesterday. We did not even know of it until later. We sent birds some time ago, to watch you both. They had lost you, but when one saw him taken, they chose to watch the entrances and stop you if they could.”

Lost her. Because she had tried so very hard to keep anyone from following her when she went to meet Vidar. Where had she been, when they attacked him? Had Vidar distracted her on purpose?

“Tell me,” Lune said, harsh and cold.

Gertrude described it softly, as if that lessened the dreadfulness of what she said. “A will-o’-the-wisp to lead him astray. A tatterfoal, to replace his own horse and carry him into the trap.” She hesitated before supplying the last part. “And Achilles, to bring him down.”

One tiny comfort Lune could take from that: Invidiana must not mean to have Deven battle to the death, or she would have saved Achilles for later, and sent Kentigern instead.

“There’s more,” Rosamund said. “His manservant Colsey was following him, it seems. I do not know why, or what happened… but he’s dead.”

Colsey. Lune had met him, back when they were all at court, and her greatest concern had been how to evade Deven’s offer of marriage without losing his usefulness to her. She had liked him, and his close-mouthed loyalty to his master.

Gone, that easily. And Deven…

Lune turned away and walked two paces. She could go no farther; the room she had rented was scarcely larger than a horse’s stall.

The lure was plain. The question was whether she would take it.

It hardly mattered whether Invidiana had Francis Merriman’s ghost. The Queen knew enough. Would Lune now walk into her trap?

Without thinking, one hand dropped to touch the purse that held the last of the loaf Deven had given her. Mortal bread. She had consumed so much of it, since she met him. Not enough to make her human, but enough to change her.

Michael Deven loved her. Not Anne Montrose, but Lune. She knew it the night he led her to his house. What did that love mean to her?

Would she spurn it, and flee to save herself?

Or would she accept it — return it — despite the cost?

She had never felt that choice within her before. Too much mortal bread; it brought her to an unfamiliar precipice. Her mind moved in strange ways, wavering, uncertain.

“My lady?” Gertrude whispered from behind her.

Lune’s hands stilled on her skirt. She turned to find the two brownies watching her with hesitant expressions. It was the first time she had seen them show fear. They had spent years opposing Invidiana; now, at long last, their game might be at an end.

“The London Stone lies within the Onyx Hall,” Lune said. “So does Invidiana, who made a pact with Hell. And so does Michael Deven.

“I will do what we had intended. I will seek out Doctor Dee.”

MEMORY: Long and long ago…

There was a beauty of night, pale as the moon, dark as her shadow, slender and graceful as running water. A young man saw her dancing under the stars, and loved her; he pined and sighed for her, until his mother feared he would waste away, lost in dreams of love. For that happened at times, that folk should die for love of the strangers under the hills.

Such was not this young man’s lot. A plan was formed, wherein he would have the beautiful stranger to wife. Great preparations were made by his people and by hers, a glorious midsummer wedding on the banks of the river, a little distance from the village where the young man’s father ruled. There would be music and dancing, good food and drink, and if the maidens and youths of the village fell in love with their guests from the other side, perhaps this wedding would be only the first of many. And when it was done, the young man would have a fine house to share with his wife, in time succeeding his father as chieftain and ruling in his place.

So it was planned. But it did not come to pass.

The guests gathered beneath the twilit summer sky. On the one side, the weathered faces of the villagers, tanned by the sun in their labors, the old ones wrinkled, the young ones round-cheeked and staring at the folk across the field. There stood creatures tall and tiny, wide-shouldered and slender, some with feathers, hooves, tails, wings.

The one the young man loved looked at her people, in all their wild glory, and even their ugliness was more beautiful to her, because it was what they were and always would be.

Then she looked at the people of the village, and she saw how accidents marked their bodies, how they soon crumbled and fell, how their houses stood on bare dirt and they scratched out their living with toil.

And she asked herself: Am I to go from this to that?

So she fled, leaving the young man alone beneath the rising moon, with his heart broken into pieces.

He sickened and died, but not for love. Yet he took strange pride in his illness, laughing a mad laugh that grieved his mother unbearably. You see, we prove her right. We die so soon, so easily; she will remain long after I am gone. I do not mourn the mayfly, nor yoke my heart to its; why should it be different with her?

Bitterness poisoned the words, the terrible knowledge that his love was as nothing to the immortal creature upon whom it had fixed.

The moon waned and waxed, and when it was full once more, the young man died. On his deathbed he spoke his last words, not to his family, but to the absent creature that had been the end of him. May you suffer as we suffer, in sickness and age, so that you find no escape from that which you fled. May you feel all the weight of mortality, and cry out beneath your burden, until you atone for the harm you have done and understand what you have spurned.

Then he died, and was buried, and never more did the villagers gather in harmony with the strangers under the hills.

MORTLAKE, SURREY: May 7, 1590

The house, with all its additions and extensions, was like an old man dreaming in the afternoon sunlight, relaxed into a sprawling doze. Yet to Lune it seemed more foreboding than the Onyx Hall: a lair of unknown dangers.

Be it angels or devils he summoned inside, it was not a place a faerie should go.

Lune put her shoulders back and approached the door with a stride more resolute than she felt.

She was a woman on her own, with no letter of introduction to smooth her way. But the maidservant was easy enough to charm, and Dee’s wife proved sympathetic. “He’s at his studies,” the woman said, shifting the infant she held onto her other hip. The small creature stared frankly at Lune, as if it could see through the glamour. “But if ’tis urgent…”

“I would be most grateful,” Lune said.

Her reception was warmer than expected. “You will forgive my frankness in asking,” Dee said, once the formalities were dispensed with, “but has this anything to do with Michael Deven?”

This was not in the mental script Lune had prepared on her journey to Mortlake. “I beg your pardon?”

A surprising twinkle lightened the astrologer’s tired eyes. “I am not unaware of you, Mistress Montrose. Your lady the Countess of Warwick has been kind to me since my return, and I had the honor of friendship with Sir Francis Walsingham. When Master Deven came to my door, asking for aid in the matter of a young gentlewoman, ’twas not difficult to surmise whom he meant.”

No magic, just an observant mind. Lune began to breathe again. “Indeed, Doctor Dee — it has everything to do with him. Will you aid me?”

“If I can,” Dee said. “But some things are beyond my influence. If he is in some political difficulty—”

Not of the sort he thought. Lune clasped her hands in her lap and met the old man’s gaze, putting all the sincerity she could muster into it. “He is in great peril, and for reasons I fear must be laid at my feet. And it may be, Doctor Dee, that you are the only man in England who could help us.”

His face stilled behind its snowy beard. “And why would that be?”

“They say you speak with angels.”

All pleasantness fell away, but his eyes were as bright and unblinking as a hawk’s. “I fear, Mistress Montrose, that you may have an overly dramatic sense of his danger, my abilities, or both. Angels—”

“I am not overly dramatic,” she snapped, forgetting in her distress to be polite. “I assure you. The tale is a complex one, Doctor Dee, and I have not the time to waste on it if at the end you will tell me you can be of no aid. Do you hold conference with angels, or not?”

Dee rose from his seat, ink-stained fingers twitching his long robe straight. Turning away to pace across the room, he spoke very deliberately. “I see that you are distraught, Mistress Montrose, and so I will lay two things before you. The first is that angelic actions are no trivial matter, no miracle that can be summoned at a whim to solve worldly ills.

“The second…” He paused for a long time, and his hands, clasped behind his back, tightened. Something hardened his voice, lending it an edge. “The second is that such efforts require assistance — namely, the services of a scryer, one who can see the presences when they come. My former companion and I have parted ways, and I have found no suitable replacement for him.”

The first point did not worry her; the second did. “Can you not work without such assistance?”

“No.” Dee turned back to face her. His jaw was set, as if against some unhappy truth. “And I will be honest with you, Mistress Montrose. At times I doubt whether I have ever spoken with an angel, or whether, as they accuse me, I have done naught but summon devils, who play with me for their own amusement.”

Her mouth was dry. All her hope crumbled. If not Dee, then who? A priest? Invidiana had destroyed priests before. And Lune did not think a saint would answer the call of a faerie.

“Mistress Montrose,” Dee said softly. Despite the lines that had sobered his face, his manner was compassionate. “Will you not tell me what has happened?”

A simple question, with a dangerous answer. Yet some corner of Lune’s mind was already calculating. If he were not the sorcerer she had expected, then a charm might bedazzle him long enough for her to escape, should all go poorly. She would be destroying Anne Montrose, but no life remained for that woman regardless….

She truly was thinking of doing it.

“Can I trust you?” Lune whispered.

He crouched in front of her, keeping space between them, so as not to crowd her. “If it means no harm to England or the Queen,” Dee said, “then I will do my best to aid you in good faith.”

The door was closed. They were private.

Lune said, “I am not as I seem to be.” And, rising to her feet, she cast aside her glamour.

Dee rose an instant later, staring.

“The Queen of faerie England,” she said, every muscle tensed to flee, “has formed a pact with Hell. I need the aid of Heaven to break it. On this matter rests not only the safety of Michael Deven, but the well-being of your own kingdom and Queen.”

He did not shout. He did not fling the name of God up as defense. He did nothing but stare, his eyes opaque, as if overtaken by his thoughts.

“So if you cannot summon angels,” Lune said, “then tell me, Doctor Dee, what I should do. For I do not know.”

Within the mask of his beard, his mouth was twitching; now she read it as a kind of bitterness, surprising to her. “Did you send him?” he asked abruptly.

“Michael Deven?”

“Edward Kelley.”

The name ground out like a curse. Where did she know it from? She had heard it somewhere….

“When he came to me,” Dee said coldly, “he offered to further my knowledge in magic with faeries.”

Memory came. A human man with mangled ears; she had seen him once or twice at court — her own court — and heard his name. She had never known more. “I did not send him,” Lune said. “But someone may have. Who was he?”

“My scryer,” Dee replied. “Whom I have long suspected of deception. He came to me so suddenly, and seemed to have great skill, but we so often fought….” Now she recognized the note in his voice; it was the sound of affection betrayed. This Kelley had been dear to him once.

“He is gone now?” Lune asked.

Dee made a cut-off gesture with one hand. “We parted ways in Trebon. He is now court alchemist to the Holy Roman Emperor.”

Then he truly was out of reach. Lune said, “Please, Doctor Dee. I beg you.” Never in all the ages she could remember had she knelt, as a fae, to a mortal, but she did it now. “I know I am no Christian soul, but Michael Deven is, and he will die if I cannot stop this. And does not your God oppose the devil, wherever he may work? Help me, I beg. I do not know who else to ask.”

Dee gazed blindly down at her, distracted once more. “I have no scryer. Even Kelley may have given me nothing but falsehoods, and I myself have no gift for seeing. It may be that I have no more power to summon angels than any other man.”

“Will you not try?” Lune whispered.

With her eyes fixed on him, she saw the change. Some thought came to him, awakening all the curiosity of his formidable mind. The expression that flickered at the edge of his mouth was not quite a smile, but it held some hope in it. “Yes,” Dee said. “We will try.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: May 8, 1590

Thirst was the greatest threat.

Deven tried to distract himself. The room, he came to realize, was Invidiana’s presence chamber. Larger by far than Elizabeth’s, it had an alien grandeur a mortal queen could only dream of, for in this place, fancies of architecture could truly take flight. The pillars and ribs that supported the arching ceiling were no more than a decoration born from some medieval fever dream; they were not needed for strength. The spaces between them were filled with filigree and panes of crystal, suspended like so many fragile swords of Damocles.

Beneath and among these structures wandered fae whom he presumed to be the favored courtiers of this Queen. They were a dizzying lot: some human-looking, others supernaturally fair, others bestial, and clad in finery that was to mortal courtiers’ garb as the chamber was to mortal space. They all watched him, but none came near him; clearly word had gone around that he was not to be touched. How much did they know of who he was, and why he was there?

Lacking an answer to that question, Deven decided to test his boundaries. He tried to speak to others; they shied away. He followed them around, eavesdropping on their conversations; they fell silent when he drew near, or forwent the benefit of being so near the Queen and left the chamber entirely. The fragments he overheard were meaningless to him anyway.

He spoke of God to them, and they flinched, while Invidiana looked on in malicious amusement.

She was less amused when he decided to push harder.

Deven took up a position in the center of the chamber, facing the throne, and crossed himself. Swallowing against the dryness of his mouth, he began to recite.

“Our father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

The chamber was half-empty before he finished; most of those who remained were bent over or sagged against the walls, looking sick. Only a few remained untouched; those, he surmised, had eaten of mortal food recently. But even they did not look happy.

Nor did Invidiana. She, for the first time, was angry.

He tried again, this time in a different vein, dredging up faded memories of prayers heard from prisoners and recusants. “Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur Nomen Tuum…”

This time even he felt its force. The hall trembled around him; its splendor dimmed, as if he could see through the marble and onyx and crystal to plain rock and wood and dirt, and all the fae stood clad in rags.

Then something slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the floor and driving all breath from him. His Catholic prayer ended in a grunt. A voice spoke above him, one he knew too well, even though he had heard scarcely a dozen words from it. “Should I cut out his tongue?” Achilles asked.

“No.” If the Latin form had shaken Invidiana, she gave no sign. “We may yet need him to speak. But stop his mouth, so he may utter no more blasphemies.”

A wad of fabric was shoved into Deven’s mouth and bound into place. His thirst increased instantly as every remaining bit of moisture went into the cloth.

But his mind was hardly on that. Instead he was thinking of what he had seen, in that instant before Achilles took him down.

Invidiana’s throne sat beneath a canopy of estate, against the far wall. Under the force of his prayer, it seemed for a moment that it masked an opening, and that something lay in the recess behind it.

What use he could make of that knowledge, he did not know. But with his voice taken away, knowledge was his only remaining weapon.

MORTLAKE, SURREY: May 8, 1590

“You are mad,” Lune said.

“Perhaps.” Dee seemed undisturbed by the possibility; no doubt he had been accused of it often enough. “But children are ideal for scrying; children, and those who suffer some affliction of the mind. Kelley was an unstable man — well, perhaps that is no recommendation, if in truth he did naught but deceive me. Nonetheless. The best scryers are those whose minds are not too shackled by notions of possibility and impossibility.”

“You yourself, then.”

He shook his head. “I am too old, too settled in my ways. My son has shown no aptitude for it, and we have no time to find another.”

Lune took a slow breath, as if it would banish her feeling that all this had taken a wrong turn somewhere. “But if you question whether you have ever spoken with an angel before, what under the sun and moon makes you believe one will answer to a faerie?”

They were in his most private workroom, with strict orders to his surprisingly large family that under no circumstances were they to be disturbed. Lune hoped it would be so; at Dee’s command, she had eaten no food of any kind since the previous day — which meant no mortal bread.

He knew quite well what that meant, for she had told him. At great length, when she began to understand what he had in mind. And that was before he voiced his decision to use her as his scryer.

The philosopher shook his head again. “You misunderstand the operation of this work. Though you will be a part of it, certainly, your role will be to perceive, and to tell me what you see and hear. The calling is mine to perform. I have been in fasting and prayer these three days, for I intended to try again with my son; I have purified myself, so that I might be fit for such action. The angel — if indeed one comes — will come at my call.”

Now she understood the fasting. But prayer? “I have not made such thorough preparations.”

The reminder dimmed his enthusiasm. “Indeed. And if this fails, then we will try again, three days from now. But you believe time to be of the essence.”

Invidiana had the patience of a spider; she would wait three years if it served her purpose. But the longer Deven remained in the Onyx Hall, the greater the likelihood that the Queen would kill him — or worse.

Worse could take many forms. Some of them were the mirror image of what Lune risked now. Baptism destroyed a fae spirit, rendering it no more than mortal henceforth. Dee had not suggested that rite, but who knew what effect this “angelic action” would have?

That frightened her more than anything. Fae could be slain; they warred directly with one another so rarely because children were even more rare. But death could happen. Nor did anyone know what if anything lay beyond it, though faerie philosophers debated the question even as their human counterparts did. The uncertainty frightened Lune less than the certainty of human transformation. ’Twas one thing to draw close to them, to bask in the warmth of their mortal light. To be one…

She had already made her choice. She could not unmake it now.

Lune said, “Then tell me what I must do.”

Dee took her by the hand and led her into a tiny chapel that adjoined his workroom. “Kneel with me,” he said, “and pray.”

Her exposed faerie nature felt terrifyingly vulnerable. With mortal bread shielding her, she could mouth words of piety like any human. But now?

He offered her a kindly smile. If her alien appearance disturbed him, he had long since ceased to show it. “You need not fear. Disregard the words you have heard others say — Catholic and Protestant alike. The Almighty hears the sentiment, not the form.”

“What kind of Christian are you?” Lune asked, half in astonishment, half to stall for time.

“One who believes charity and love to be the foremost Christian virtues, and the foundation of the true Church, that lies beyond even the deepest schism of doctrine.” His knobbled hand pressed gently on her shoulder, guiding her to her knees. “Speak in love and charity, and you will be heard.”

Lune gazed up at the cross that stood on the chapel’s wall. It was a simple cross, no crucifix with a tormented Christ upon it; that made it easier. And the symbol itself did not disturb her — not here, not now. Dee believed what he said, with all his heart. Without a will to guide it against her, the cross was no threat.

Speak in love and charity, he had said.

Lune clasped her hands, bent her head, and prayed.

The words came out hesitantly at first, then more fluidly. She wasn’t sure whether she spoke them aloud, or only in her mind. Some seemed not even to be words: just thoughts, concepts, inarticulate fears, and longings, set out first in the manner of a bargain — help me, and I will work on your behalf — then as justifications, defenses, an apology for her faerie nature. I know not what I am, in the greater scope of this world; whether I be fallen angel, ancient race, unwitting devil, or something mortals dream not of. I do not call myself Christian, nor do I promise myself to you. But would you let this evil persist, simply because I am the one who works against it? Does a good deed cease to be good, when done by a heathen spirit?

At the last, a wordless plea. Invidiana — Suspiria — had taken this battle into territory foreign to Lune. Adrift, lost in a world more alien than the undersea realm, she could not persevere without aid.

So far did she pour herself into it, she forgot this was preparation only. She jerked in surprise when Dee touched her shoulder again. “Come,” he said, rising. “Now we make our attempt.”

The workroom held little: a shelf with a few battered, much-used books. A covered mirror. A table in the center, whose legs, Lune saw, rested upon wax rondels intricately carved with symbols. A drape of red silk covered the tabletop and something else, round and flat.

Upon that concealed object, Dee placed a crystalline sphere, then stepped back. “Please, be seated.”

Lune settled herself gingerly on the edge of a chair he set facing the sphere.

“I will speak the invocation,” he said, picking up one of the books. Another bound volume sat nearby, open to a blank page; she glimpsed scrawled handwriting on the opposite leaf, that was evidently his notes, for he had ink and a quill set out as well.

She wet her lips. “And I?”

“Gaze into the stone,” he said. “Focus your mind, as you did when you prayed. Let your breathing become easy. If you see aught, tell me; if any being speaks to you, relate its words.” He smiled at her once more. “Do not fear evil spirits. Purity of purpose, and the formulas I speak, will protect us.”

He did not sound as certain as he might have, and his hand tightened over the book he held, as if it were a talisman. But Lune was past the point of protest; she simply nodded, and turned her attention to the crystal.

John Dee began to speak.

The first syllables sent a shiver down her spine. She had expected English, or Latin; perhaps Hebrew. The words he spoke were none of these, nor any language she had ever heard. Strange as they were, yet they reverberated in her bones, as if the sense of them hovered just at the edge of her grasp. Did she but concentrate, she might understand them, though she had never heard them before.

The words rolled on and on, in a sonorous, ceaseless chant. He supplicated the Creator, Lune sensed, extolling the glory of Heaven and its Lord, describing the intricate structure of the world, from the pure realms of God down to the lowliest part of nature. And for a brief span she perceived it as if through his eyes: a beautifully mathematical cosmos, filled with pattern, correspondence, connection, like the most finely made mechanical device, beyond the power of any mind save God’s to apprehend in its entirety, but appreciable through the study of its parts.

To this, he had devoted his life. To understanding the greatest work of God.

In that moment, all the aimless, immortal ages of her life seemed by comparison to be flat and without purpose.

And then she felt suffused by a radiance like that of the moon, and her lips parted; she spoke without thinking. “Something comes.”

Dee’s invocation had finished, she realized, but how much time had passed, she did not know. A soft scratching reached her ears: his quill upon paper. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.” The sphere filled her vision; how long since she had last blinked?

“Speak to it.”

What should she say? Her mind was roaringly empty of words. Lune groped for something, anything. “-We — I — most humbly beseech your power, your aid. The Queen of the Onyx Court has formed a pact with Hell. Only with your power may it be broken. Will you not help us?”

Then she gasped, for the crystal vanished; she saw instead a figure, its form both perfect and undefinable. The table was gone, the chair was gone; she stood in an empty space before the terrible glory of the angel, and sank to her knees without thinking, in respect and supplication.

As if from a great distance, she heard Dee utter one word, his own voice trembling in awe. “Anael.”

Her spirit lay exposed, helpless, before the angel’s shining might. With but a thought, it could destroy her, strip all faerie enchantment from her being, leave her nothing more than a mortal remnant, forever parted from the world that had been hers. She was no great legend of Faerie to defend herself against such, and she had laid herself open to this power of her own free will.

All that defended her now was, as Dee had said, charity and love.

She trembled as the figure drew closer. The strength might have crushed her, but instead it held her, like a fragile bird, in the palm of its hand. Lune felt lips press against hers, and the cool radiance flooded her body; then they were gone.

“Bear thou this kiss to him thou lovest,” the angel Anael said, its words the true and pure form of the language Dee had spoken, a force of beauty almost too much to bear.

Then the light receded. She was in her chair; the crystal was before her; they were alone once more in the room.

Dee murmured a closing benediction, and sank back into his own chair, from which he had risen without her seeing. The notebook sat next to him, hardly touched.

Lune’s eyes met the philosopher’s, and saw her own shock echoed there.

He, who had no gift for seeing, had seen something. And he knew, as she did, that it was a true angelic presence, and it had answered her plea.

Bear thou this kiss to him thou lovest.

She had made that choice. What it meant, she did not know; she had never given her heart before. How a kiss would aid her, she could not imagine. It seemed a weak weapon against Invidiana.

But it was Heaven’s response to her plea. For Michael Deven’s sake, she would go into the Onyx Hall, and somehow win her way through to him. She would bring him Anael’s kiss.

What happened after that was in God’s hands.

THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: May 8, 1590

“She must be distracted,” Lune said. “Else she will place all her knights and guardsmen and other resources between me and Deven, and I will stand no hope of reaching him. They will kill me, or they will bind me and drag me before her; either way, I will not be able to do what I must.”

The Goodemeades did not question that part of it. Lune had told them in brief terms of what had passed in Mortlake — brief not because she wished to hide anything from them, but because she had few words to describe it. Their eyes had gone round with awe, and they treated her now with a reverent and slightly fearful respect that unnerved her.

Not so much respect, though, that they didn’t question certain things. “My lady,” Gertrude said, “she will be expecting you to do exactly that. You have not come back, which means you know of your peril. If you are not simply to walk into her claws, then you must try to draw her attention away. But she will recognize any diversion as just that — and ignore it.”

From across the rose-guarded room, Rosamund, who had been silent for several minutes, spoke up. “Unless the diversion is something she cannot ignore.”

“The only thing she could not ignore would be—”

“A real threat,” Lune said.

Something Invidiana truly did have to fear. A war on her very doorstep, that she must send her soldiers to meet, or risk losing her throne.

The list of things that fit that name was short indeed.

Gertrude’s face had gone white, and she stared at her sister. Grimness sat like a stranger on Rosamund’s countenance, but if a brownie could look militant, she did. “We could do it,” she said. “But, my lady, once such a force is unleashed, it cannot be easily stopped. We all might lose a great deal in the end.”

Lune knew it very well. “Could anything stop them?”

“If she were to draw the sword out again — perhaps. That, more than anything, is what angers them. They might be satisfied, if she renounced it.”

“But Invidiana would never do it,” Gertrude said. “Only Suspiria, and perhaps not even her.” She stared up at Lune, her eyes trembling with tears. “Will we have her back, when you are done?”

The unspoken question: Or do you go to kill her?

Lune wished she could answer the brownie’s question, but she was as blind as they. The angel’s power waited within, alien and light, but she did not know what it would do. Could a faerie spirit be damned to Hell?

Her reply came out a whisper. “I can make no promises.”

Rosamund said heavily, “With that, we must be content. We have no other choice.”

“You must move with haste.” The knot of tension in Lune’s stomach never loosened, except for a few timeless moments, in the angel’s presence. “Use Vidar.”

“Vidar?”

“Corr was his agent, or at least an ally. He bade me be silent about any others I might find at court. I do not know his scheme, but there must be one; we can make use of it.” Her vow did not prevent her from telling the Goodemeades; the last person in creation they would share the information with was Invidiana. But she had never expected to use such a loophole.

Rosamund came forward, smoothing her apron with careful hands, and put an arm around her white-faced sister. “Make your preparations, my lady. Gertrude and I will raise the Wild Hunt.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: May 9, 1590

The sun’s heat baked his shoulders and uncovered head. His ride had been a long one, and he was tired; he swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground, handing off his reins to a servant. They were gathered by the riverbank, an elegant, laughing crowd, playing music, reciting poetry, wagering at cards. He longed to join them, but ah! He was so thirsty.

A smiling, flirtatious lady approached him, a cup of wine in each hand. “My lord. Will you drink?”

The chased silver was cool in his fingers. He looked down into the rich depths of the wine, smelling its delicate bouquet. It would taste good, after that long ride.

With the cup halfway to his lips, he paused. Something…

“My lord.” The lady rested one hand gently on his arm, standing closely enough that her breasts just touched his elbow. “Do you not like the wine?”

“No,” he murmured, staring at the cup. “That is… ”

“Drink,” she invited him. “And then come with me.”

He was so thirsty. The sun was hot, and the wine had been cooled in the stream. He had not eaten recently; it would go to his head. But surely that did not matter — not in this gay, careless crowd. They were watching him, waiting for him to join them.

He brought the cup to his lips and drank.

The liquid slid down his throat and into his belly, chilling him, making all his nerves sing. No wine he had ever drunk tasted thus. He gulped at it, greedy and insatiable; the more he drank, the more he wanted, until he was tipping the cup back and draining out the last drops, and shaking because there was no more—

There was no sunlight. There was no meadow by the stream. There were courtiers, but the faces that watched were wild and inhuman, and all around him was darkness.

The lush faerie lady stepped back from him, her face avid with delight, and from some distance away Invidiana gave sardonic applause. “Well done, Lady Carline. Achilles, you need not restore his gag.” The Queen smiled across the chamber at Deven, letting all her predatory pleasure show. “He will speak no names against us now.”

The cup fell from Deven’s hand and clanked against the stone, empty to the dregs. Faerie wine. He had refused all food, all drink, knowing the danger, but in the end his body had betrayed him, its mortal needs and drives making it an easy target for a charm.

Even if Lune came for him now, it was too late.

He reached for the names that had been his defense, and found nothing. A mist clouded his mind, obscuring the face of… what? There had been something, he knew it; he had gone to church, and prayed….

But the prayers were gone. Those powers were no longer within his reach.

Laughter pursued him as he stumbled away, seeking refuge in a corner of the chamber. Now, at last, the stoicism he had clung to since his capture failed him. He wanted more; his body ached with the desire to beg. Another cup — a sip, even—

He clenched his hands until his knuckles creaked, and waited, trembling, for the next move.

LONDON: May 9, 1590

The moon rose as the sun set, its silver disc climbing steadily into the sky.

The curfew bells had rung. London was abed — or ought to be; those who were out late, the drunken gentlemen and the scoundrels who waited to prey on them, deserved, some would say, whatever happened to them.

On the northern horizon, without warning, storm clouds began to build.

They moved from north to south, against the wind, as clouds should not have done. In their depths, a thunder like the pounding of hoofbeats against the earth, up where no earth was. A terrible yelping came from the clouds, that more skeptical minds would dismiss as wild geese. Those who knew its true source, hid.

Brief flashes of lightning revealed what lay within the clouds.

The hounds ran alongside, leaping, darting, weaving in and out of the pack. Black hounds with red eyes; white hounds with red ears; all of them giving that terrible, belling cry, unlike any dog that ever mortal bred.

Horses, shod with silver and gold, flaring with spectral light. Formed from mist, from straw, from fae who chose to run in such shape, their headlong gallop brought them on with frightening speed. And astride their backs rode figures both awful and beautiful.

Stags’ horns spiked the sky like a great, spreading crown. Feathered wings cupped the air, pinions whistling in the storm wind. Their hair was yellow as gold, red as blood, black as night; their eyes burned with fury, and in their hands were swords and spears out of legend.

The forgotten kings of faerie England rode to war.

It went by many names. Wisht Hounds, Yeth Hounds, Gabriel Rachets, Dando and His Dogs. A dozen faces and a dozen names for the Wild Hunt, united now in a single purpose.

They would not involve mortals in their war, and for decades their enemy had lain safe behind that shield. But something else was vulnerable, could not be hidden entirely away; to do so would negate its very purpose, and break the enchantment it held in trust. And so it stood in the open, unprotected, on Candlewick Street.

The Wild Hunt rode to destroy the London Stone.

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: May 9, 1590

The wind was already stirring, fleeing before the oncoming storm, when Lune reached the western porch of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“The entrances will be watched, my lady,” Gertrude had said, when word came that the irrevocable move was made, the Wild Hunt was alerted to the secret of the London Stone, and the battle would take place under the full moon. “But there’s one she cannot guard against you.”

St. Paul’s and the White Tower. The two original entrances to the Onyx Hall, created in the light of the eclipse. The latter lay within the confines of a royal fortress, and would have its own protection below.

But the former lay on Christian ground. No faerie guard could stay there long, however fortified with mortal bread he might be. None had passed through it since Invidiana had confined Francis Merriman to the chambers below.

The only question was whether it would open for Lune.

She passed the booksellers’ stalls, closed up for the night. The wind sent refuse rattling against their walls. A snarl split the air, and she halted in her tracks. Light flashed across the city, and then from the sky above, a roar.

She glimpsed them briefly, past the cathedral’s spire. Dame Halgresta Nellt, towering to a height she could never reach in the Onyx Hall. Sir Kentigern, at his sister’s right hand, howling a challenge at the oncoming storm. Sir Prigurd, at the left, his blunt features composed in an expression of dutiful resolution. She had always liked Prigurd the best. He was not as brutal as his siblings, and he was that rarity in the Onyx Hall: a courtier who served out of loyalty, however misplaced.

They stood at the head of the Onyx Guard, whose elf knights blazed in martial glory. Their armor gleamed silver and black and emerald, and their horses danced beneath them, tatterfoals and brags and grants eager to leap into battle. Behind stood the massed ranks of the infantry, boggarts and barguests, hobyahs and gnomes, all the goblins and pucks and even homely little hobs who could be mustered to fight in defense of their home.

The Onyx Hall. It was their home. A dark one, and twisted by its malevolent Queen, but home nonetheless.

Before the night was done, the Wild Hunt might reduce it to rubble.

But if Lune let herself question that price, she would be lost before she ever started.

The great doors of the western porch swung open at her approach. Stepping within, she felt holiness pressing against her skin, weirdly close and yet distant; the waiting tension of the angel’s kiss thrummed within her. Like a sign shown to sentries, it allowed her passage.

She did not know what she sought, but the angel’s power resonated with it, like a string coming into tune. There. A patch of floor like any other in the nave; when she stepped on it, the shock ran up her bones.

Here, faerie magic erupted upward. Here, holy rites saturated the ground. Here, London opened downward, into its dark reflection.

Lune knelt and laid one hand against the stone of the floor. The charm that governed the entrance spoke to her fingers. Francis had prayed, the words of God bringing him from one world to the other without any eyes seeing him. For her, the angelic touch sufficed.

Had any observer been there to watch, the floor would have remained unchanged. But to Lune’s eyes, the slabs of stone folded away, revealing a staircase that led downward.

She had no time to waste. Gathering her courage, Lune hurried below — and prayed the threat of the Hunt had done its job.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: May 9, 1590

The marble walls resonated with the thunder above, trembling, but holding strong.

Seated upon her throne, Invidiana might have been a statue. Her face betrayed no tension — had been nothing but a frozen mask since a hideous female giant brought word that the Wild Hunt rode against London.

Whatever he might say against her, Deven had to grant Invidiana this: she was indeed a Queen. She gave orders crisply, sending her minions running, and in less time than he would have believed possible, the defense of the Onyx Hall was mustered.

The presence chamber was all but empty. Those who had not gone to the battle had departed, hiding in their chambers, or fleeing entirely, in the hope of finding some safety.

Most, but not all. Invidiana, motionless upon her throne, was flanked by two elf knights, black-haired twin brothers. They stood with swords unsheathed, prepared to defend her with their lives. A human woman with a wasted, sunken face and dead eyes crouched at the foot of the dais.

And Achilles stood near Deven, clad only in sandals and a loincloth, his body tense with desire to join in the slaughter.

The thunder grew stronger, until the entire chamber shook. A crashing sound: some of the filigree had detached from between the arches, and plummeted to the floor. Deven glanced up, then rolled out of the way just in time to save himself as an entire pane of crystal shattered upon the stones.

Achilles laughed at him, fingers caressing the hilt of the archaic Greek sword he wore.

Where was Lune, in it all? Up in the sky, riding with the Hunt to save him? Battling at some entrance against guards that would keep her from the Onyx Hall?

Would she bring the miracle he needed?

He hoped so. But a miracle would not be enough; when she arrived, Achilles and the two elf knights would destroy her.

His sword was gone, broken in the battle against Achilles; he had not even a knife with which to defend himself. And he had no chance of simply snatching a weapon from the mortal or the knights. While he struggled with one, the others would get him from behind.

His eye fell upon the debris that now littered the floor, and a thought came to him.

They said Suspiria had called her lover Tiresias, for his gift. She had clearly continued the practice, naming Achilles for the great warrior of Greek legend.

Deven glanced upward. More elements of the structure were creaking, cracking; he dove suddenly to one side, as if fearing another would fall on him. The movement brought him closer to Achilles, and when he rose to a kneeling position, a piece of crystal was cold in his palm, its razor edges drawing blood.

He lashed out, and slashed the crystal across the backs of Achilles’s vulnerable heels.

The man screamed and collapsed to the floor. Downed, but not dead, and Deven could take no chances. He seized a fragment of silver filigree and slammed it down onto his enemy’s head, smashing his face to bloody ruin and sending the muscled body limp.

He got the man’s sword into his hand just in time to meet the rush of the knights.

The palace groaned and shook under the assault of the battle above. How long would the Nellt siblings and their army hold off the Wild Hunt?

She ran flat out for the presence chamber. The rooms and galleries were deserted; everyone had gone to fight, or fled. Everywhere was debris, decorations knocked to the floor by the rattling blasts. And then the doors of the presence chamber were before her, closed tight, but without their usual guard. She should pause, listen at the crack, try to discover who was inside, but she could not stop; she lacked both the time and the courage.

Lune hit the doors and flung herself into the room beyond.

A wiry arm locked around her throat the instant she came through, and someone dragged her backward. Lune clawed behind herself, arms flailing. Fingers caught in matted hair. Eurydice. Sun and Moon, she knows….

Achilles lay in a pool of his own blood along one wall. Sir Cunobel of the Onyx Guard groaned on the floor not far away, struggling and failing to rise. But his twin Cerenel was still on his feet, and at the point of his sword, pinned with his back to a column, Michael Deven.

“So,” Invidiana said, from the distant height of her throne. “You have betrayed me most thoroughly, it seems. And all for this?”

Deven was bruised and battered, his right hand bleeding; great tears showed in his doublet, where his opponents had nearly skewered him. His eyes met hers. They were not so very far apart. If only she could get to him, just for an instant—

One kiss. But was it worth them both dying, to deliver it? What would happen, once their lips met?

Lune forced herself to look at Invidiana. “You mean to execute us both.”

The Queen’s beauty was all the more terrible, now that Lune knew from whence it came. Invidiana smiled, exulting. “Both? Perhaps, and perhaps not… he has drunk of faerie wine, you see. Already he is becoming ours. Once they take the first step, ’tis so easy to draw them in further. And you have deprived me of two of my pets. It seems only fitting that one, at least, should be replaced.”

She saw the signs of it now, in the glittering of his eyes, the hectic flush of his cheeks against his pale skin. How much had he drunk? How far had he fallen into Faerie’s thrall?

Some. But not, perhaps, enough.

Lune faced the Queen again. “He is stubborn. ’Tis a testament to your power that he drank even one sip. But a man with strong enough will can cast that off; he may refuse more. I know this man, and I tell you now: you will lose him. He will starve before he takes more from your hand, or from any of your courtiers.”

Invidiana’s lip curled. “Tell me now what you think to offer, traitor, before I lose patience with you.”

Eurydice’s bony arm threatened to choke her. Lune rasped out, “Promise me that you will keep him alive, and I will convince him to accept more food.”

“I make no promises,” Invidiana spat, her rage suddenly breaking through. “You are not here to bargain, traitor. I need do nothing you ask of me.”

“I understand that.” Lune let her weight drop; Eurydice was not strong enough to keep her upright, and so she sagged to her knees on the floor, the mortal now clinging to her back. Bowing her head against the restricting arm around her throat, Lune said, “With nothing left to lose, I can only beg, and offer my assistance — in hopes of buying this small mercy for him.”

Invidiana considered this for several nerve-racking moments. “Why would you wish for that?”

Lune closed her eyes. “Because I love him, and would not see him die.”

Soft, contemptuous laughter. Invidiana must have guessed it, but the admission amused her. “And why would he accept from you what he would not take from us?”

Her fingernails carved crescents into her palms. “Because I placed a charm on him, when I went to the mortal court, that made his heart mine. He will do anything I ask of him.”

The battle still shook the walls of the presence chamber. Most of what could fall, had fallen; the next thing to go would be the Hall itself.

Eurydice’s arm vanished from her throat.

“Prove your words true,” Invidiana said. “Show me this mortal is your puppet. Damn him with your love. And perhaps I will hear your plea.”

Lune pressed one trembling hand to the cold floor, pushed herself to her feet. She found Eurydice offering her a dented cup half-filled with wine. She took it, made a deep curtsy to the Queen, and only then turned to face Michael.

His blue eyes stared at her unreadably. There was no way to tell him what she intended, no way to tell him her words were a lie, that she had placed no charm upon him, that she would see him dead before she left him to be tormented by Invidiana, as Francis had been. All that would have to come later — if there was a later.

All that mattered now was to get close to him, for just one heartbeat.

Sir Cerenel sidestepped as she approached, but kept his blade at Deven’s throat, and now a dagger flickered out, its point trained on her. Lune drew close, raised the cup, and leaned in just a fraction closer, so she could smile into his eyes, as if drawing upon a charm. “Drink for me, Master Deven.”

His hand dashed the cup to the floor, and the instant it was gone from between them, she threw herself forward and kissed him.

As their lips met — as Lune kissed him as herself for the first time, with no masks between them — a voice rang out in the Onyx Hall, high and pure, speaking the language that lay beyond language.

“Be now freed all those whose love hath led them into chains.”

Fire burned again on Deven’s brow, six points in a ring, and he cried out against Lune’s mouth, thinking himself about to die.

But it was a clean fire, a white heat that burned away whatever Invidiana had left there, and it caused him no pain; when it ended, he knew himself to be free.

Nor was he the only one.

The elf knight staggered away, dropping his weapons, hands outstretched, as if the power of that angelic presence had blinded him. The mortal woman collapsed on the floor, mouth open in a silent scream.

And in the center of the chamber, in the very place Deven had stood to pray, he saw a slender, dark-haired man with sapphire eyes.

Francis Merriman stood loose and straight, his shoulders unbowed, his chin high, his eyes clear. Deven could see a shadow falling away from him, the last remnant of Tiresias, the maddened reflection that wandered lost in these halls for so many years. But it was a shadow only: death had freed him from the grip of dreams, and restored the man Suspiria once loved.

And Invidiana’s icy calm shattered beneath his gaze.

“Control him!” she screamed at the woman on the floor, her fingers clutching the arms of her throne. “I did not summon him—”

“Yet I am come,” Francis Merriman said. His voice was a light tenor, clear and distinct. “I have never left your side, Suspiria. You thought you bound me, first with your jewel, then by Margaret’s arts—” The mortal woman gasped at the name. “But the first and truest chains that bound me were ones I forged myself. They are my prison, and my shield. They protected me against you after my death, so that I told you nothing I did not wish you to know. And they bring me to you now.”

“Then I will banish you,” Invidiana spat. Rage distorted the melody of her voice. “You are a ghost, and nothing more. What Hell waits for your unshriven soul?”

She should not have mentioned Hell. Francis’s face darkened with sorrow. “You need not have made that pact, Suspiria. Nor need you have hidden from me. Did you think me, with my gift, blind to what you were? What you suffered? I stayed with you, knowing, and would have continued so.”

“Stayed with me? With what? A shriveling, rotting husk — you speak of prisons, and you know nothing of them. To be trapped in one’s own flesh, every day bringing you closer to worms — a fitting fate for you, perhaps, but not for me. I did what he demanded, and yet to no avail. Why should I go on trying? I would endure his punishment no more.”

Then her voice dropped from its heightened pitch, growing cold again. “Nor will I endure you.”

She raised her long-fingered hands, like two white spiders in the gloom. Deven’s entire body tensed. A darkness hovered at the edge of his vision, deeper than the shadows of the Onyx Hall, and more foul. A corruption to match the purity that had touched him with Lune’s kiss. It but waited for someone to invite it in.

Francis stopped her. He came forward with measured strides, approaching the throne, and despite herself Invidiana shrank back, hands faltering. “You did not give them your soul. You were never such a fool. No, you sold something else, did you not?” His voice was full of sorrow. “I saw it, that day in the garden. A heart, traded for what you had lost.”

Her mouth twisted in fury: an open admission of guilt.

The man who had been her lover watched her with grieving eyes. “You bartered away your heart. All the warmth and kindness you could feel. All the love. Hell gained the evil you would wreak, and you gained a mask of ageless, immortal beauty.

“But I knew you without that mask, Suspiria. And I know what you have forgotten.”

He mounted the steps of the dais. Invidiana seemed paralyzed, her black eyes fixed unblinking upon him.

“You gave your heart years before you sold it to the devil,” Francis said. “You gave it to me. And so I return it to you.”

The ghost of her love bent and kissed her, as Lune had kissed Deven moments before.

A scream echoed through the Onyx Hall, a sound of pure despair. The flawless, aching beauty of Invidiana shriveled and decayed, folding in upon itself; the woman herself shrank, losing her imposing height, until what sat upon the throne seemed like a girl, not yet at her full growth, sitting upon a chair too large for her. But no girl would ever have looked so old.

Deven flinched in revulsion from the ancient, haggard thing Invidiana had become.

As the pact with Hell snapped, as the Queen of the Onyx Court dwindled, so, too, did the ghost of Francis Merriman fade. He grew fainter and fainter, and his last words whispered through the chamber.

“I will wait for you, Suspiria. I will never leave you.”

The last wisp of him disappeared from view.

“-Please — do not leave me.”

Deven and Lune were left, the only two still standing, before the throne of the Onyx Hall.

A sound pierced the air, faint but passionate: part snarl, part shriek. The creature before them should not have been able to move, but she shifted forward, rising to her feet, and she had not lost the force of her presence; hatred beat outward like heat from a forge. Her voice was a shredded remnant of itself, grinding out the accusation. “You brought this upon me!”

Lune opened her mouth, her eyes full of urgency. But Deven stepped forward, interposing himself between his lady and the maddened shell of the Queen. He recognized what he saw in her eyes. Fury, yes, but fury to cover what lay beneath: a bottomless well of pain. She had her heart again; with it must have come all the emotions she had lost. Including remorse, for what she had done to the man she loved.

He had to say it now, before it was too late; the chance would not come again.

“Suspiria.” It was important he use that name. The pieces had fallen together in the depths of his mind; he spoke from instinct. “-Suspiria — I know why you are still cursed.”

The withered hag twitched at his words.

“You had so much of it right,” he said. Lune came forward a step, moving to stand at his side. “You atoned for your error. The Onyx Hall was a creation worthy of legend — a place for fae to live among mortals in safety, a place where the two could come together. You had so much of it right. But you did not understand.

“The chieftain’s son loved you. But you disdained mortality, did you not? You could not bear to join yourself to it. And so you cast him aside, cast his love aside, as a thing without value, for what can it be worth, when it dies so soon? But the ages you endured after that must have taught you something, as they were intended to do; else you would not have made this great hall. And you would not have loved Francis Merriman.”

He could feel the presence still. The ghost was gone, but Francis was not. The man had said it himself. He would never leave her. The love he felt joined them still.

And he had restored her ability to love.

“You did everything right,” Deven said. “Your mistake came when you did not trust it. Faced with a future alongside the man you loved — suffering a sort of mortality, yes, aging while you watched him stay eternally young — you let your fear, your disdain, triumph again. You cast aside his love, and the love you felt for him. You failed to understand its worth.”

A heart, traded for what she had lost. Youth. Beauty. Immortality. The answer had been in her hands, had she but accepted it.

Do not leave me, Francis had said.

“You face that decision again,” Deven whispered. “Your true love waits for you. Honor that love as it deserves. Do not cast it aside a third time.” This world operated by certain rules he did not have to explain to her or Lune. What was done a third time, was done forever.

For the first time since she bargained with Invidiana, Lune spoke. “Once we love, we cannot revoke it,” she said. “We can only glory in what it brings — pain as well as joy, grief as well as hope. He is as much a fae creature now as a mortal. Where you will go, I do not know. But you can go with him.”

Suspiria lifted her wasted face, lowering the clawlike hands that had risen to hide it. Only after a moment did Deven realize she was crying, the tears running down the deep gullies of her wrinkles, almost hidden from sight.

Invidiana had been evil. Suspiria was not. His heart gave a sharp ache, and a moment later, he felt Lune’s hand slip into his own.

The change happened too subtly to watch. Without him ever seeing how, the wrinkles grew shallower, the liver spots began to fade. As age had shriveled her a moment ago, now it acted in reverse, all the years lifting away, revealing the face of the woman Francis had loved.

She had the pale skin, the inky hair, the black eyes and red lips. But what had been unnerving in its perfection was now mere faerie beauty: a step sideways from mortality, enough to take the breath away, but bearable. And right.

A last, a crystalline tear hovered at the edge of her lashes, then fell.

“Thank you,” Suspiria whispered.

Then, like Francis Merriman, she faded from view, and when the throne was empty Deven knew they were both gone forever.

For a moment they stood silently in the presence chamber, with the corpse of Achilles, the huddled forms of Eurydice and the two elf knights, while Lune absorbed what she had just seen and done.

Then a pillar cracked and split in two, and Lune realized the thunder had not stopped. It had drawn nearer.

And Suspiria was gone.

Deven saw the sudden panic in her face. “What is it?”

“The Hunt,” she said, unnecessarily. “I was to ask Suspiria — the Stone — they think the kings might relent, if she relinquished her sovereignty — but what will happen, now that she is gone?”

He took off before she even finished speaking, flying the length of the presence chamber at a dead run, heading directly for the throne. No, not directly; he went to one side of it, and laid hold of the edge of the great silver arch. “Help me!”

“With what?” She came forward regardless. “The throne does not matter; we have to find the London Stone—”

“’Tis here!” Tendons ridged the backs of his hands as he dragged ineffectually at the throne. “A hidden chamber — I saw it before—”

Lune stood frozen for only a moment; then she threw herself forward and began to pull at the other side of the seat.

It moved reluctantly, protecting its treasure. “Help us!” Lune snapped, and whether out of reflexive obedience or a simple desire not to die at the hands of the Hunt, first Sir Cerenel and then Eurydice picked themselves up and came to lend their aid. Together the four of them forced it away from the wall, until there was a gap just wide enough for Lune and Deven to slip through.

The chamber beyond was no more than an alcove, scarcely large enough for the two of them and the stone that projected from the ceiling. A sword was buried halfway to the hilt in the pitted surface of the limestone, its grip just where an extremely tall woman’s hand might reach.

Lune did not know what effect the sword had, now that one half of its pact had passed out of the world, but if they could take it to the Hunt, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall… a slim hope, but she could not think of anything else to try.

Her own fingers came well short of the hilt. She looked at Deven, and he shook his head; Invidiana had been even taller than he, and he looked reluctant to touch a faerie sword regardless.

“Lift me,” Lune said. Deven wrapped his bloodstained hands about her waist, gathered his strength, and sent her into the air, as high as he could.

Her hand closed around the hilt, but the sword did not pull free.

Instead, it pulled her upward, with Deven at her side.

CANDLEWICK STREET, LONDON: May 9, 1590

She understood the truth, as they passed with a stomach-twisting surge from the alcove to the street above. The London Stone, half-buried, did not extend downward into the Onyx Hall. The Stone below was simply a reflection of the Stone above, the central axis of the entire edifice Suspiria and Francis had constructed. In that brief, wrenching instant, she felt herself not only to be at the London Stone, but at St. Paul’s and the Tower, at the city wall and the bank of the Thames.

Then she stood on Candlewick Street, with Deven at her side, the sword still in her hand.

All around them was war. Some still fought in the sky; others had dragged the battle down into the streets, so that the clash of weapons came from Bush Lane and St. Mary Botolph and St. Swithins, converging on where they stood. Hounds yelped, a sound that made her skin crawl, and someone was winding a horn, its call echoing over the city rooftops. But she had eyes only for a set of figures mounted on horseback that stood scant paces from the two of them.

She thrust the sword skyward and screamed, “Enough!”

And her voice, which should not have begun to cut through the roar of battle, rang out louder than the horn, and brought near-instant silence.

They stared at her, from all around where the fighting had raged. She did not see Sir Kentigern, but Prigurd stood astraddle the unmoving body of their sister, a bloody two-handed blade in his grip. Vidar was missing, too. Which side did he fight on? Or had he fled?

It was a question to answer later. In the sudden hush, she lowered the tip of the sword until it pointed at the riders — the ancient kings of Faerie England.

“You have brought war to my city,” Lune said in a forbidding voice, a muted echo of the command that had halted the fighting. “You will take it away again.”

Their faces and forms were dimly familiar, half-remembered shades from scarcely forty years before. Had one of them once been her own king? Perhaps the one who moved forward now, a stag-horned man with eyes as cruel as the wild. “Who are you, to thus command us?”

“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune said.

The words came by unthinking reflex. At her side, Deven stiffened. The sword would have trembled in her grasp, but she dared not show her own surprise.

The elfin king scowled. “That title is a usurped one. We will reclaim what is ours, and let no pretender stand in our way.”

Hands tensed on spears; the fighting might resume at any moment.

“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune repeated. Then she went on, following the same instinct that had made her declare it. “But not the Queen of faerie England.”

The stag-horned rider’s scowl deepened. “Explain yourself.”

“Invidiana is gone. The pact by which she deprived you of your sovereignty is broken. I have drawn her sword from the London Stone; therefore the sovereignty of this city is mine. To you are restored those crowns she stole years ago.”

A redheaded king spoke up, less hostile than his companion. “But London remains yours.”

Lune relaxed her blade, letting the point dip to the ground, and met his gaze as an equal. “A place disregarded until the Hall was created, for fae live in glens and hollow hills, far from mortal eyes — except here, in the Onyx Hall. ’Twas never any kingdom of yours. Invidiana had no claim to England, but here, in this place, she created a realm for herself, and now ’tis mine by right.”

She had not planned it. Her only thought had been to bear the sword to these kings, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall, and hope she could sue for peace. But she felt the city beneath her feet, as she never had before. London was hers. And kings though they might be, they had no right to challenge her here.

She softened her voice, though not its authority. “Each side has dead to mourn tonight. But we shall meet in peace anon, all the kings and queens of faerie England, and when our treaty is struck, you will be welcome within my realm.”

The red-haired king was the first to go. He wheeled his horse, its front hooves striking the air, and gave a loud cry; here and there, bands of warriors followed his lead, vaulting skyward once more and vanishing from sight. One by one, the other kings followed, each taking with them some portion of the Wild Hunt, until the only fae who remained in the streets were Lune’s subjects.

One by one, they knelt to her.

Looking out at them, she saw too many motionless bodies. Some might yet be saved, but not all. They had paid a bloody price for her crown, and they did not even know why.

This would not be simple. Sir Kentigern and Dame Halgresta, if they lived — Lady Nianna — Vidar, if she could find him. And countless others who were used to clawing and biting their way to the top, and fearing the Queen who stood above them.

Changing that would be slow. But it could begin tonight.

To her newfound subjects, Lune said, “Return to the Onyx Hall. We will speak in the night garden, and I will explain all that has passed here.”

They disappeared into the shadows, leaving Lune and Deven alone in Candlewick Street, with the sky rapidly clearing above them.

Deven let out his breath slowly, finally realizing they might — at last — be safe. He ached all over, and he was light-headed from lack of food, but the euphoria that followed a battle was beginning to settle in. He found himself grinning wryly at Lune, wondering where to start with the things they needed to say. She was a queen now. He hardly knew what to think of that.

She began to return his smile — and then froze.

He heard it, too. A distant sound — somewhere in Cripplegate, he thought. A solitary bell, tolling.

Midnight had come. Soon all the bells in the city would be ringing, from the smallest parish tower to St. Paul’s Cathedral itself. And Lune stood out in the open, unprotected; the angel’s power had gone from her. The sound would hurt her.

But it would destroy something else.

He had felt it as they passed through the London Stone. St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of the two original entrances to the Onyx Hall. The pit still gaped in the nave, a direct conduit from the mortal world to the fae, open and unprotected.

In twelve strokes of the great bell, every enchantment that bound the Onyx Hall into being would come undone, shredded by the holy sound.

“Give me your hand.” Deven seized it before she could even move, taking her left hand in his left, dragging her two steps sideways to the London Stone.

“We will not be safe within,” Lune cried. Her body shook like a leaf in the wind, as more bells began to ring.

Deven slapped his right hand onto the rough limestone surface. “We are not going within.”

It was the axis of London and its dark reflection, the linchpin that held the two together. Suspiria had not made the palace alone, because she could not; such a thing could only be crafted by hands both mortal and fae. Deven would have staked his life that Francis Merriman was a true Londoner, born within hearing of the city bells.

As Deven himself was.

With his hand upon the city’s heart, Deven reached out blindly, calling on forces laid there by another pair before them. He had drunk of faerie wine. Lune had borne an angel’s power. They had each been changed; they were each a little of both worlds, and the Onyx Hall answered to them.

The Thames. The wall. The Tower. The cathedral.

As the first stroke of the great bell rang out across the city, he felt the sound wash over and through him. Like a seawall protecting a harbor in a storm, he took the brunt of that force, and bid the entrance close.

A fourth stroke; an eighth; a twelfth. The last echoes of the bell of St. Paul’s faded, and trailing out after it, the other bells of London. Deven waited until the city was utterly silent before he lifted his hand from the Stone.

He looked up slowly, carefully, half-terrified that he was wrong, that he had saved the Hall but left Lune vulnerable, and now she would shatter into nothingness.

Lune’s silver eyes smiled into his, and she used their clasped hands to draw him toward her, so she might lay a kiss on his lips. “I will make you the first of my knights — if you will have me as your lady.”

MEMORY: January 9, 1547

The man walked down a long, colonnaded gallery, listening to his boot heels click on the stone, trailing his fingers in wonder across the pillars as he passed them by. It was impossible that this should all be here, that it should have come into being in the course of mere minutes, and yet he had seen it with his own eyes. Indeed, it was partly his doing.

The thought still dizzied him.

The place was enormous, far larger than he had expected, and so far almost entirely deserted. The sisters had chosen to stay in their own home, though they visited from time to time. Others would come, they assured him, once word spread farther, once folk believed.

Until then, it was just him, and the woman he sought.

He found her in the garden. They called it so, even though it was barely begun: a few brave clusters of flowers — a gift from the sisters — grouped around a bench that sat on the bank of the Walbrook. She was not seated on the bench, but on the ground, trailing her fingers in the water, a distant expression on her face. The air in the garden was pleasantly cool, a gentle contrast to the winter-locked world outside.

She did not move as he seated himself on the ground next to her. “I have brought seeds,” he said. “I have no gift for planting, but I am sure we can convince Gertrude — since they are not roses.” She did not respond, and his expression softened. He reached for her nearer hand and took it in his own. “Suspiria, look at me.”

Her eyes glimmered with the tears she was too proud to shed. “It has accomplished nothing,” she said, her low, melodic voice trembling.

“Did you hear that sound, half an hour ago?”

“What sound?”

He smiled at her. “Precisely. All the church bells of the city rang, and you did not hear a thing. This is a haven the likes of which has never existed, not even in legend. In time many fae will come, all of them dwelling in perfect safety beneath a mortal city, and you say it has accomplished nothing?”

She pulled her hand from his and looked away again. “It has not lifted the curse.”

Of course. Francis had known Suspiria far longer than his appearance would suggest; he had not dwelt among mortals for many a year now. This hall had been an undertaking in its own right, a challenge that fascinated them both, and they had many grand dreams of what could be done with it, now that it was built. But it was born for another purpose, one never far from Suspiria’s mind.

In that respect, it had failed.

He shifted closer and put gentle pressure on her shoulder, until she yielded and lay down, her head in his lap. With careful fingers he brushed her hair back, wondering if he should tell her what he knew: that the face he saw was an illusion, crafted to hide the age and degeneration beneath. The truth did not repel him — but he feared it would repel her, to know that he knew.

So he kept silent as always, and closed his eyes, losing himself in the silky touch of her hair, the quiet rippling of the Walbrook.

The gentle sound lifted him free of the confines of his mind, floating him into that space where time’s grip slackened and fell away. And in that space, an image formed.

Suspiria felt his body change. She sat up, escaping his suddenly stilled arms, and took his face in her delicate hands. “A vision?”

He nodded, not yet capable of speech.

The wistful, loving smile he knew so well softened her face. He had not seen it often of late. “My Tiresias,” she said, stroking his cheekbone with one finger. “What did you see?”

“A heart,” he whispered.

“Whose heart?”

Francis shook his head. Too often it was thus, that he saw without understanding. “The heart was exchanged for an apple of incorruptible gold. I do not know what it means.”

“Nor I,” Suspiria admitted. “But this is not the first time such meaning has eluded us — nor, I think, will it be the last.”

He managed a smile again. “A poor seer I am. Perhaps I have been too long among your kind, and can no longer tell the difference between true visions and my own fancy.”

She laughed, which he counted a victory. “Such games we could play with that; most fae would believe even the strangest things to be honest prophecy. We could go to Herne’s court and spread great confusion there.”

If it would lighten her heart, he would have gladly done it, and risked the great stag-horned king’s wrath. But sound distracted him, something more than the gentle noise of the brook. Someone was coming, along the passage that led to the garden.

Suspiria heard it, too, and they rose in time to see the plump figure of Rosamund Goodemeade appear in an archway. Nor was she alone: behind her stood a fae he did not recognize, travel-stained and weary, with a great pack upon his back.

Francis took Suspiria’s hand, and she raised her eyebrows at him. “It seems another has come to join us. Come, let us welcome him together.”

WINDSOR GREAT PARK, BERKSHIRE: June 11, 1590

The oak tree might have stood there from the beginning of time, so ancient and huge had it grown, and its spreading branches extended like mighty sheltering arms, casting emerald shadows on the ground below.

Beneath this canopy stood more than two score people, the greatest gathering of faerie royalty England had ever seen. From Cumberland and Northumberland to Cornwall and Kent they came, and all the lands in between: kings and queens, lords and ladies, a breathtaking array of great and noble persons, with their attendants watching from a distance.

They met here because it was neutral ground, safely removed from the territory in dispute and the faerie palace many still thought of as an unnatural creation, an emblem of the Queen they despised. Under the watchful aegis of the oak, the ancient tree of kings, they gathered to discuss the matter — and, ultimately, to recognize the sovereignty of a new Queen.

It was a formality, Lune knew. They acknowledged her right to London the moment they obeyed her command to leave. Her fingers stroked the hilt of the sword as one of the kings rolled out a sonorous, intricate speech about the traditional rights of a faerie monarch. She did not want to inherit Invidiana’s throne. It carried with it too many dark memories; the stones of the Onyx Hall would never be free of blood.

But that choice, like others, could not be unmade.

The orations had gone on for quite some time. Lune suspected her fellow monarchs were luxuriating in the restoration of their dignity and authority. But in time she grew impatient; she was glad when her own opportunity came.

She stood and faced the circle of sovereigns, the London Sword sheathed in her hands. The gown she wore, midnight-blue silk resplendent with moonlight and diamonds, felt oddly conspicuous; she still remembered her time out of favor, hiding in the corners of the Onyx Hall, dressed in the rags of her own finery. But the choice was deliberate: many of those gathered about her wore leather or leaves, clothing that less closely mirrored that of mortals.

Lune had a point to make. And to that end, she lifted her gaze past those gathered immediately beneath the oak, looking to the attendant knights and ladies that waited beyond.

Lifting one hand, she beckoned him to approach.

Standing between the Goodemeade sisters, Michael Deven hesitated, as well he might. But Lune raised one eyebrow at him, and so he came forward and stood a pace behind her left shoulder, hands clasped behind his back. He, too, was dressed in great finery, faerie-made for him on this day.

“Those of you gathered here today,” Lune said, “remember Invidiana, and not fondly. I myself bear painful memories of my life under her rule. But today I ask you to remember someone else: a woman named Suspiria.

“What she attempted, some would say is beyond our reach. Others might say we should not reach for it, that mortal and faerie worlds are separate, and ever should stay so.

“But we dwell here, in the glens and the hollow hills, because we do not believe in that separation. Because we seek out lovers from among their kind, and midwives for our children, poets for our halls, herdsmen for our cattle. Because we aid them with enchantments of protection, banners for battle, even the homely tasks of crafting and cleaning. Our lives are intertwined with theirs, to one degree or another — sometimes for good, other times for ill, but never entirely separate.

“Suspiria came to believe in the possibility of harmony between these two worlds, and created the Onyx Hall in pursuit of that belief. But we do wrong if we speak only of her, for that misses half the heart of the matter: the Hall was created by a faerie and a mortal, by Suspiria and Francis Merriman.”

Reaching out, Lune took Deven by the hand, bringing him forward until he stood next to her. His fingers tightened on hers, but he cooperated without hesitation.

“I would not claim the Onyx Hall if I did not share in their belief. And I will continue to be its champion. So long as I reign, I will have a mortal at my side. Look upon us, and know that you look upon the true heart of the Onyx Court. All those who agree will ever be welcome in our halls.”

Her words carried clearly through the still summer air. Lune saw frowns of disagreement here and there, among the kings, among their attendants. She expected it. But not everyone frowned. And she had established her own stance as Queen — her similarity to Suspiria, her difference from Invidiana — and that, more than anything, was her purpose here today.

The day did not end with speeches. There would be celebrations that night, and she would take part, as a Queen must. But two things would happen before then.

She walked with Deven at twilight along the bank of a nearby stream, once again hand in hand. They had said many things to one another in the month since the battle, clearing away the last of the lies, sharing the stories of what had happened while they were apart. And the stories of what had happened while they were together — truths they had never admitted before.

“Always a mortal at your side,” Deven said. “But not always me.”

“I would not do that to you,” Lune responded, quietly serious. “’Twas not just Invidiana’s cruelty that warped Francis. Living too long among fae will bring you to grief, sooner or later. I love the man you are, Michael. I’ll not make you into a broken shell.”

He could never leave her world entirely. The faerie wine he drank had left its mark, as Anael’s power had done to her. But it did not have to swallow him whole.

He sighed and squeezed her hand. “I know. And I am thankful for it. But ’tis easy to understand how Suspiria came to despair. Immortality all around, and none for her.”

Lune stopped and turned him to face her, taking his other hand. “See it through my eyes,” she said. “All the passion of humanity, all the fire, and I can do no more than warm myself at its edge.” A presentiment of sorrow roughened her voice. “And when you are gone, I will not grieve and recover, as a human might. I may someday come to love another — perhaps — but this love will never fade, nor the pain of its loss. Once my heart is given, I may never take it back.”

He managed a smile. “Francis gave Suspiria’s heart back.”

Lune shook her head. “No. He shared it with her, and reminded her that she loved him, still and forever.”

Deven closed his eyes, and Lune knew he, like her, was remembering those moments in the Onyx Hall. But then an owl hooted, and he straightened with a sigh. “We are due elsewhere. Come — she does not like to be kept waiting.”

WINDSOR CASTLE, BERKSHIRE: June 11, 1590

When all the attendants and ladies-in-waiting had been dismissed, when the room was empty except for the three of them, Elizabeth said, “I think ’tis time you showed me your true face, Mistress Montrose.”

Deven watched Lune out of his peripheral vision. She must have been half-expecting the request, for she did not hesitate. The golden hair and creamy skin faded away, leaving in their place the alien beauty of a faerie queen.

Elizabeth’s mouth pressed briefly into a thin, hard line. “So. You are her successor.”

“Yes.” Deven winced at Lune’s lack of deferential address, but she was right to do it; Elizabeth must see her as a fellow queen, an equal. “And on behalf of my people, I offer you a sincere apology for the wrongs your kingdom suffered at the hands of Invidiana.”

“Is that so.” Elizabeth fingered her silken fan, studying Lune. “She did much that was ill, ’tis true.”

Deven could not make up his mind which queen to watch, but something in Elizabeth’s manner sparked a notion deep within his brain. “Your Majesty,” he asked, directing the words at the aging mortal woman, “how long did you know Anne Montrose was not what she seemed to be?”

Elizabeth’s dark gaze showed unexpected amusement, and a smile lurked around the corners of her mouth, proud and a little smug. “My lords of the privy council take great care to watch the actions of my royal cousins in other lands,” she said. “Someone had to keep an eye on the one that lived next door.”

This did startle Lune. “Did you—”

“Know of others? Yes. Not all of them, to be sure; no doubt she sent temporary agents to manipulate my lords and knights, whom I never saw. But I knew of some.” Now the pride was distinctly visible. “Margaret Rolford, for one.”

Lune gaped briefly, then recovered her dignity and nodded her head in respectful admission. “Well spotted. I would be surprised you allowed me to remain at court — but then again, ’tis better to know your enemy’s agents and control them, is it not?”

“Precisely.” Elizabeth came forward, looking thoughtful. She stood a little taller than Lune, but not by much. “I cannot say I will like you. There is too much of bad blood, not so easily forgotten. But I hope for peaceful relations, at least.”

Lune nodded. Looking at the two of them, Deven marked their choice of color: Lune in midnight blue and silver, Elizabeth in russet brocade with gold and jewels. Neither wore black, though Elizabeth often favored it. For the striking contrast with her auburn hair and white skin, or out of some obscure connection to or competition with Invidiana? Either way, it seemed both were determined to separate themselves from that past, at least for today.

Elizabeth had turned away to pace again; now she spoke abruptly. “What are your intentions toward my court?”

This was the true purpose of the meeting, the reason why “Mistress Montrose” had made a visit to Windsor Castle. Deven and Lune had talked it over before coming, but neither could guess what answer Elizabeth wanted to hear. All they could offer was the truth.

“’Tis a delicate balance,” Lune said. “Invidiana interfered too closely, appropriating your actions for her own ends, and treading upon your sovereign rights. I have no wish to imitate her in that respect. But we also have no interest in seeing England fall to a Catholic power. I do not speak for all the faerie kingdoms, but if there is need of defense, the Onyx Court will come to your aid.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly, evaluating that. “I see. Well, I have had enough of pacts; I want no swords in stones to bind us to each other. If such a threat should arise, though, I may hold you to your word.”

Then she turned, without warning, to Deven. “As for you, Master Deven — you offered to free me from that pact, and so you did. What would you have of me in return?”

His mind went utterly blank. How Colsey would have laughed to see him now, and Walsingham, too; he had come to court with every intention of advancing himself, and now that his great opportunity came, he could not think what to ask. His life had gone so very differently than he expected.

Kneeling, he said the first thing that came into his head. “Madam, nothing save your gracious leave to follow my heart.”

Elizabeth’s response was cool and blunt. “You cannot marry her, you know. There’s not a priest in England that would wed you.”

John Dee might do it, but Deven had not yet worked up the courage to ask. “I do not speak only of marriage.”

“I know.” Her tone softened. Deep within it, he heard the echo of a quiet sorrow, that never left her heart. “Well, it cannot be made official — I would not fancy explaining it to my lords of the council — but if our royal cousin here finds it acceptable, you shall be our ambassador to the Onyx Court.”

He could almost hear Lune’s smile. “That would be most pleasing to us.”

“Thank you, madam.” Deven bowed his head still further.

“But there is one difficulty.” Elizabeth came forward and put her white fingers under his chin, tilting his head up so he had no choice but to meet her dark, level gaze. “’Twould be an insult to send a simple gentleman to fill such a vital position.” She pretended to consider it, and he saw the great pleasure she took in this, dispensing honors and rewards to those who had done her good service. “I believe we shall have to knight you. Do you accept?”

“With all my heart.” Deven smiled up at one of his queens, and out of the corner of his eye, saw his other queen echo the expression.

It was a divided loyalty, and if a day should come that Elizabeth turned against Lune, he would regret occupying such a position.

But he could not leave the faerie world, and he could not leave Lune. So together, they would ensure that day never came.