The heat was immense, each of the pyres burning, huge flames to the sky. It scalded his own cheeks, his throat choked with the thick smoke, his eyes burning.
He was looking at the Elder Steward’s face as he lit the straw, and he made himself keep looking at it as he stepped back, at eyes reflecting flame, and then a face of flame, crinkling and then turning to blackened ash.
For hundreds of years, the Stewards had kept their watch. They had been the last of those who remembered, bearing the star across centuries of careful tradition.
Now their star was flame; their strength was flame; their fate was flame; and all that they remembered would flicker and grow cold.
We’re all that’s left. Will looked at the others: Sarah, her face streaked with tears and soot; Grace beside her, holding her hand; Violet, whose eyes had looked lacerated since she had found Justice; Cyprian, who had lost everything. None of them had the training to lead a fight against the Dark King. We’re all that’s left. And we’re not enough.
The fight they faced seemed immense. Not just Simon but all he could do, his power to take what was good in the world and turn it into ash and destruction. Now he had the Shadow Stone and the power of the Shadow Kings, and no Stewards to fight against him.
The Shadow Kings would be nothing like Marcus, a new-made shadow of weakened Steward blood. The Shadow Kings were far older and more powerful, the commanders of great shadow armies, and Will remembered how they had felt in that Stone. They had wanted to get out.
Was this how it had been in those ancient days? The lights in the world going out, one by one, as the Dark King’s forces marched towards victory?
The fire roared, dwarfing them as they stared up at its flames, and he’d never felt so small and alone against a fight that seemed vast and unending.
It was Cyprian who broke the moment, scrubbing an arm across his face and picking up one of the unlit torches. He stuck it into the closest pyre, letting the flames engulf its tip. When he drew his arm back, the funereal fire had transferred from the pyre to the torch. He took the flame and held it aloft as he set out determinedly for the wall.
Will exchanged a quick look with Violet and then followed him, with the others behind.
The wind was sharper and colder up on the wall, where Cyprian walked along empty battlements under a circle of orange light. He stopped at a huge iron receptacle six feet across, the inside blackened and charred. Will could smell the charcoal and ash of its extinguished fire, acidic, earthy and cold, the remnants of a perpetual blaze.
It didn’t need wood to burn; Will knew that from the Elder Steward’s stories, but also from some instinct deep inside himself.
Two Stewards had used to guard it, standing on either side of the iron dish, like sentries at their post, a vigil kept for centuries. For this had been the ancient beacon that the Stewards called the Final Flame.
Cyprian stood over it, holding up his torch. He was lit up in flame light, Will and the others gathered around him. In the reflected light, Cyprian’s breathing was shallow, but his voice was clear as he made his pledge.
‘I am the last of the Stewards,’ he said. ‘And this flame is my promise: while there is a single star, there is still light.’
And he threw his torch into the bowl of the beacon, and it came alight, leaping into flame that grew, brighter and brighter. Will imagined it visible across the marshes, a light that could be seen for miles, a message to Simon, and to the Stewards, past and future, guiding them home.
It was only much later that they thought to check the cells under the Hall, but James was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
TO FALL INTO darkness … it was his greatest fear. And I left him alone with that.
Violet pushed out onto the battlements, Justice’s words ringing in her ears. She had wanted to get out, to be alone on the cold, high wall, but she found herself drawn to the Flame, its immense heat and its light. A burst of sparks lit up the empty-toothed crenels, and she found a place at one of them, looking out at the black marshes with its heat to her back. One thought had driven her out here, to stand on the edge of the wall, her breathing fast, her hands fists.
I should have been here.
She was strong. She was fast. There must have been something she could have done, something to help, something—
The others were in the gatekeep, the four of them in one room on makeshift pallets, sleeping as best they could. They had agreed they ought to be near the gate in case of a further attack, but the truth was that no one wanted to spend the night in the empty Hall. Even in the gatekeep, she hadn’t been able to close her eyes, lying wide awake before pushing herself up to stalk out into the night.