‘Your mother led me on quite the chase. She got away from me in London after I killed her sister. She even hid you from me at first, until I got reports that she might have a child. That was clever of her … She knew killing her sister, Mary, wasn’t enough to bring back the Dark King. That I’d need to kill all of you. She kept one step ahead of me for seventeen years.’
A burst of anger at that; he had to force it down. Will thought about what his mother had done – what she had really done all those years on the run – had tried to do right up to the end – and he drew in a tight breath. ‘She was stronger than you knew.’
‘Until she came here. Hiding in these hills. You know, they call this place the Dark Peak. A fitting name for the birthplace of the Dark King.’
Will looked around at the green hills rising to forbidding peaks, the closeness of the sky that hung over the valley where the stream cut its path through the undulating earth. And behind him the brown and grey stone of the house where he’d lived until his mother had bled out on the ground under Simon’s feet.
‘You think he’ll be reborn here?’ said Will.
‘He’ll return,’ said Simon. ‘And take his throne.’
‘After you kill me,’ said Will.
Simon smiled.
‘You know, we’re similar, you and I.’
‘Are we?’ said Will.
‘You’re Blood of the Lady,’ said Simon. ‘I’m Blood of the Dark King. We’re both descendants of the ancient world. Power runs in our veins.’ Simon smiled in a way that made Will doubly conscious of the blood under his feet that had seeped into the earth while his mother died. Then Simon’s smile grew hard and brittle. ‘Yet with every generation, the blood weakens. Mingled with the blood of humans, ordinariness, mortality … our lines have dwindled until we have no power of our own. We’re reduced to using objects. Objects! Remnants of a world that should be our own. Magic is our inheritance, yet it has been taken from us.’
‘You think this is yours,’ said Will. ‘That it’s owed to you.’
‘Humans have overrun this world, an infestation, obliterating the great cultures of the past. I’m the one who’s going to cleanse it and return it to the way it should have been. Since I was a boy, my father told me about my destiny. The Dark King ruled a better world. And with your death, I’m going to bring it back.’
‘Bring back a world of darkness?’ said Will. ‘A world of terror and control?’
‘A world of magic,’ said Simon, ‘where those with the blood of old will ascend and conquer. Humans will serve us as is fitting. The great palaces, the impossible wonders, the treasures that were taken from us – your death will restore it all.’
Simon’s eyes burned with greedy intensity. ‘And when He comes, the world will know true power. For He is greater than any human mind can comprehend. He will make them all bow down before Him. He is my true father and He will take me as my heir and deliver it to me … my birthright.’
Will laughed: a dry, hollow sound.
Simon’s head snapped around to him.
‘Your birthright? You’re not the Dark King,’ said Will. ‘You’re just a pretender to the throne.’
Will drew his sword. Long and straight, a sword of the Stewards with a star emblazoned on the hilt. He faced down Simon, and he thought: The Stewards are dead, and my mother is dead, and all the warriors of the Light are dead.
But I’m here. And I’m going to do this.
‘A sword?’ said Simon, with a laugh. ‘But of course. James told me. They tried to train you, but you couldn’t use her power.’
‘You can’t use his,’ said Will.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Simon, and pushed back his coat, reaching for the onyx hilt and in one smooth motion drawing the Corrupted Blade.
It was Death, thirty inches of black steel, and Simon unleashed its full devastating force. Black fire spewed from its blade, and Will cried out at the annihilating blast of it, as if the air itself was made of pain.
Birds fell out of the sky. The ground began to split open. The tearing power of it ripped at Will’s clothes, which were in tatters, and he flung up his hand uselessly, driven to his knees as Simon held the sword, barely controlling it as its black fire erupted, killing everything.
And in the haze, Will seemed to see those eyes of black flame. The image filled his mind, overpowering everything; the pain in his head was blinding, he let out a terrible cry, and the whole world was burning. A nightmare unleashed to destroy every living thing, a dark inferno that would scour away all life—