Fire that was burning his body up from the inside. They weren’t wrong; the conjunction had weakened the Dragon. Might even kill it, in time. But how long would that take?
She saw again the terror in Galen’s face, as he went to his death. Walking into Hell with his eyes wide open. Could the torments of damnation be any worse than this, his spirit shackled to a creature that would destroy those he loved?
As if it could read her thoughts, the Dragon grinned and spread Galen’s arms wide. “Do you think death will free him? We are one spirit now. Kill him, send him to Hell, and I will go with him, for I am Galen St. Clair.”
They both lunged.
The Dragon was ready for Irrith, because it knew her, as Galen had known her. One searing arm came across to block her thrust. But Galen knew weapons as a gentleman did, with rules and courtesy and honor, and he couldn’t block what he didn’t expect.
Irrith’s right hand was knocked out of line—but the knife wasn’t there anymore. Their joined momentum brought them crashing together hard, her slight weight against Galen’s searing body, and her left hand brought the blade up and into his chest.
They staggered, scant inches from the Stone. Then Irrith set her feet and drove him back, slamming his rigid frame against the brick wall behind. Elemental ice and elemental fire warred, sending waves of heat and cold radiating outward, until she wanted to scream and flee to safety. But she hung on, sinking the knife hilt-deep into his ribs, glaring into those eyes of flame, until the light in them flickered and died, leaving behind pits of black ash. When Irrith let go, the body fell limply to the ground. The knife-hilt clattered free, its blade melted away.
She stood gasping, shaking, staring at the corpse of Galen St. Clair.
His blind face seemed to stare at her in accusation. Pain twisted inside her, sharper than the vanished knife. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t love you—I couldn’t.
If she had loved him, she could never have killed him.
Slowly Irrith became aware of eyes on her. No one stood near, but mortals were watching from a safe distance, peering through shutters and half-cracked doors, whispering to each other in the shadows. From farther off she heard shouts and running footsteps: a constable, no doubt. Her concealment had fallen at some point, and now she stood over a dead man’s body, with her faerie face bared to the world.
She could not leave him there, lying in the filth of the street. Clenching her jaw, Irrith bent and took hold of Galen’s lifeless, unresisting hand. With an effort, she heaved him over her shoulder, then built another concealment for them both. It was hard, with so many people watching, but the darkness helped; she slipped away down Cannon Street, carrying the dead Prince, taking him home to rest.
Fae knew little of funerals. Those mortals who died among them were generally deposited back in the world they’d come from, in their beds or in a gutter, according to the kindness of the one who put them there. The fae did not bury their own dead. There was no need, when their bodies fell so soon to nothingness, the spirits that shaped them gone to oblivion.
The Princes of the Stone were always returned to their families, to be buried with Christian rites. Only Michael Deven lay interred in the ground of the Onyx Hall, beneath a stand of ever-blooming apple trees in the night garden, forever close to the faerie Queen who loved him.
Michael Deven—and now Galen St. Clair.
For him, the fae gathered in solemn observance, lining the path through the night garden. Or at least as close to solemnity as they could manage: some were puzzled by this semimortal ceremony, and some showed too-sharp curiosity in his death, fascinated by the experience that came among them so rarely. But knights of the Onyx Guard stood sentinel along the path, and Bonecruncher’s loyal goblins lurked behind; anyone who thought to profane the Prince’s funeral vanished instantly from view, with a minimum of fuss.
The pall-shrouded bier came through the arch, borne on a tatterfoal-drawn open carriage. Preceding it was an honour guard of five elf-knights and one half-mortal valet; Edward Thorne and his father Sir Peregrin led the way, side by side. The plaintive sound of a flute threaded through the quiet air, marking time for their slow procession. Fae knelt as they went by. The bier crossed the Walbrook, passed under the drooping branches of willow trees, and came among new mourners: the mortals of the Onyx Hall, all those who had been under Galen’s authority as Prince. They rarely gathered in one place, those mortals, and made an odd assortment standing together. Men of all classes, from the wealthy through to lawyers and artisans, labourers and the humble poor. Women, some beautiful, some scarred by disease. Old and young, and a large knot of children, lured away into a realm of wonder, their eyes wide as they watched grief go by.
At last the procession reached its end: the obelisk listing Princes of the Stone. A small flame burnt in its base, and a new line had been chiselled into the plaque:
A small group waited there. Mrs. Vesey supported Delphia St. Clair, who wore mourning sewn for her by the finest faerie seamstresses. Lune stood alone, dressed in the same white she wore every October, when she came to grieve for Michael Deven.
And Irrith, clad in green, the executioner attending the funeral.
The honour guard lifted the carriage’s burden down to the grass. Irrith stared at the pall draped over the coffin, grateful for its presence. She preferred to remember the man she’d first seen, extending his hand to the muddy, swearing sprite who had just fallen through the Newgate entrance; but every time she blinked, she saw the gaping voids of Galen’s eyes, burnt out by the Dragon. And nothing could block her ears to the memory of that searing voice, taunting her with the inexorable truth. Kill him, send him to Hell, and I will go with him, for I am Galen St. Clair.
They had saved the Onyx Hall, but nothing could rob the beast of that victory.
Galen’s family would bury a manikin disguised as their son and brother, thinking Galen the victim of some illness or misfortune. Irrith hadn’t inquired after the lie. There would be Christian rites then, but they could hardly say any here, in the heart of the Onyx Hall. Delphia had not pressed for any. She understood what this court had meant to Galen, and where he would wish to be buried.
Once the bearers folded the pall and retired into a line, Lune came forward, and laid her hand upon the grass.
They weren’t certain if she could do this, without a Prince’s aid. It might come to shovels after all, the indignity of digging a grave and piling the dirt atop the coffin. The Hall answered to Queen and Prince together, a faerie and a mortal. But either Lune could in this small way command it alone, or the palace recognised the interment of its former master, for after a few breathless moments, the bier began to sink beneath the earth. The grass closed over the coffin’s lid, and still the Queen knelt; then, at last, she let her breath out and stood.
No more ceremony than that—but Lune looked to each of them, and repeated the words she’d spoken in the great presence chamber. “Remember him.”
Irrith, hearing the Dragon’s laughter in her mind, wished she could forget.
Word came that evening, from someone’s mortal pet: a Londoner named John Bevis had sighted the comet on the night of April thirtieth.