‘The blade struck the Forever King across his throat. Starsteel, fallen from heavenly skies, pitted against immortal flesh, ancient when the empire was a madman’s dream.
‘I heard the sound of steel striking stone.
‘The song of dreams undone.’
Gabriel looked at his hands.
‘And Ashdrinker shattered.
‘Astrid struck, screaming, the silver knife in her hand flashing. All hell’s fury in her eyes. If she could have given her life to make him bleed a drop, she would have died ten thousand times. But for all her rage, my love was a child’s fist upon a mountainside. And Voss’s hand snaked out around my throat, cinching like an iron vice. I roared as he seized Astrid with his other hand, drawing her to his chest as he looked into my eyes and smiled like all light’s dying.
‘“There he is,” he whispered. “The lion awakened.”
‘I snarled, blind fury, strangled rage. And with all the dark might of his ancient blood, Voss lifted me high and hurled me down, his strength so great I was sent crashing through the floor and into the cellar below. My skull smashed upon the stone, and I felt my bones shatter, my body break, my heart inside it. His voice drifted down through the dust, the blood, the hurt, a whisper in my rising dark, too soft for any but us two to hear.
‘“I shall await thee in the east, Lion.”
‘And though I would have given my last drop of blood, my very soul to fight it off, still I felt it take me. The awful arms of darkness, reaching up from that splintered stone and dragging me down into sleep unwanted. And the last sound I heard before it took me was not my broken, ragged breath, nor my love screaming my name, nor the sound of all we’d built, all we’d done, all we’d wished for, crashing down around my ears.
‘It was laughter.
‘Voss’s laughter.
‘And then, blackness fell.’
XX
A PROMISE IN THE DARK
‘I WOKE IN darkness. Blood in my mouth. Blood in the air. And I wondered if this was hell. No flames, no fallen, no lake of brimstone. Just dark and silence unending. But then I moved, and pain lanced through me, broken bones and bleeding meat, and I realized life, cursed and hateful, still coursed through this wretched body.
‘I felt a weight upon my chest. My fingers roaming old leather, cool metal, familiar. A razored edge, a jagged tip with six inches now missing – my sword, laid out upon my breast as for a king in a barrow of old. My eyes began to pick out details in the black. Shattered bottles and crumpled shelves. I was in our cellar, I realized – the ruins of it, anyway. Ceiling beams held an avalanche of broken stone but a few feet above my head. It looked as if the entire house had been brought down atop me, the lighthouse also – tons of fallen masonry held in check by only a few slivers of wood and the accursed hand of God.
‘“God …”
‘Gabriel …
‘Ashdrinker whispered in my head, her voice now broken like she was.
‘Gabriel, I am s-s-so sorry I f-failed thee, failed thee.
‘And then I saw her. Lying on the stone beside me.
‘My love. My life. My Astrid.
‘My heart, splintering inside my chest.
‘She looked more beautiful than she’d ever been. But it wasn’t the beauty of a thousand smiles, nor of the mother of my child, nor of the light of my life. No. Hers was a dark beauty now. Those lips that had once breathed life into mine? Now red as murder. That face shaped like heartbreak? Not milk-white and soft, but marbled and hard. I saw no rise and fall of breath in her breast, no pulse at her throat, still marked by the press of his teeth and the leavings of his feast. And I reared back, almost breaking at the final, awful horror of it. Because she wasn’t dead. She was Dead.
‘And I knew the colour of desolation then. And its colour was red.
‘I’ll not give breath to the dark thoughts that entered my mind. Not even for your pale Empress, vampire. I’m sure you can imagine the desperate, vain hopes, the evil, selfish dreamings, as far from heaven as devils can fly. All smothered at last by simple despair.
‘This was not her.
‘This was not my Astrid.
‘I pictured her as once she’d been. That first night we met in the Library of San Michon, that beauty, that smile, that girl who wielded books like blades.
‘I kissed her lips, red as rubies, cold as midnight.
‘I saw her lashes stirring on her cheeks.
‘And I picked up my sword.
‘Two little words.
‘“Forgive me.”
‘Do it.
‘“I can’t.”
‘You must.
‘“Oh, God.”
‘And I did.
‘I looked to the heaven that hadn’t answered when I begged. The God who’d let it come to this. I felt them rise up like poison inside me, shuddering sobs spilling through bloody teeth. I wept like a father untethered, like a son betrayed, like a husband widowed, until my throat closed over and my voice was broken and I longed for death.
‘But through the roaring in my ears, I heard a voice inside my head, clinging to the words she now spoke. Words like vengeance. Words like violence. Words like promise and purpose where, otherwise, there was only madness. Not for me to lie quiet in my grave while the one who had buried them yet walked. Not for me to close my eyes and sleep, to consign myself to this tomb. Not until the song was sung.
‘If he wanted a war, I would be it.
‘If he wanted a fear, let it be me.
‘One last gift my love gave to me. One last sacrament, taken with burning tears in my eyes, and revulsion for all I was boiling in my soul. I’d no other way out of that grave, no other path towards the vengeance of which she whispered. But if there was some tattered remnant left of my heart before then, it turned to ashes as her taste crashed upon my tongue one final time. I made a vow then and there, a promise to them both, my Astrid, my Patience, my angels. Whispered in the dark, cold as tombs and black as hell, that never again would the blood of another touch my lips. Never again would I feed this monster I was.
‘Never again.
‘And with the strength she’d given me, bloody tongue and trembling hands, I tore my way free of that grave he’d buried us in. And with the smoke of the fires I lit rising to the sky behind me, I dragged on the shape of what I’d been, and I remembered; there is a time for grief, and a time for songs, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been and gone.
‘But there is a time for killing too.
‘There is a time for blood.
‘And a time for rage.
‘And a time to close your eyes and become the thing hell wants you to be.
‘And so. I did.’
XXI
ALL AND EVERYTHING
‘I FELL SILENT, still staring out that empty window of Ch?teau Aveléne. The place she’d never been. The chapel where we’d been wed. Echoes of my happiest day. Dior still knelt on the floor beside me. Squeezing my hand so tight I thought she might break it. Weeping so hard I feared she might never stop.
‘“I’m sorry, Gabe. God, I’m so sorry.”
‘“Now you see,” I whispered. “Why I’ll not give you over to him. Why I’ll not lose one more drop to this. Why I must see this through to the end. Because I miss them, like a piece of me is missing. And I love them, like love is all I was. And there is nothing I’d not do, no depth to which I’d not sink, no price I wouldn’t pay to have them back and here with me. Because they were my all and my everything.