‘Cyprian, you have to find a way to get her out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Shadow King is here for one reason: to end the line of the Lady. Elizabeth can’t hide or wait it out. The only chance she has is to run.’ She was thinking it through as she spoke. ‘It will break through the wards. I’ll hold it off in the great hall. You use the distraction to get the horses and go.’ She looked out at the hallway that was torn to pieces, the walls cracked and the furniture splintered. The shadow had tried to get at Justice and failed. At least at first. Now he was ashes and flame, and the memory of a hand proffered to help her. ‘Justice held Marcus off for a while.’
Cyprian’s face was white. ‘There are only two horses left.’
‘Then you each ride double.’
It wasn’t what he had meant; she knew it; she heard him say it, almost as if he was at a distance. ‘That doesn’t leave a horse for you.’
She looked at him. She didn’t have to speak. They both knew she wouldn’t return from this fight. There was no one alive who could stand against a Shadow King. But she might be able to delay them long enough to buy Elizabeth time.
‘I won’t leave you here,’ said Cyprian.
‘You have to.’ She remembered the Elder Steward’s words to her. ‘I’m the strongest one here.’ You are the strongest fighter the Light has left. She was a Lion. Grace and Sarah were janissaries, and Cyprian was a Steward who had rejected the Cup. ‘I’m the only one who can buy you the time that you need.’
‘Then let me fight with you.’
He meant it. She could see that. She looked at his noble, familiar face, realising that it would be the last time that she would see it. She hadn’t thought she’d grow fond of his perfectly ordered hair, his immaculate clothing, the proud upright of his Steward posture.
‘You can’t leave the others,’ she said. ‘They need a fighter with them too.’
‘Violet—’
‘This is what I have to do.’
His eyes held the pain of acknowledgement as he looked back at her. ‘I was wrong about Lions,’ he said. ‘They’re brave and they’re true.’
‘Go,’ she said.
They parted ways, with the sky on fire. He went to the stables.
She went to the great hall.
It was covered in refuse. The remnants of the fight littered the ground: the last stand of the Stewards against the dark. Violet remembered her first glimpse of the great hall, walking in dwarfed by its size and awed by its ancient beauty. Now it was a graveyard; the bodies were gone, but the impression of death remained, the silence and stillness that of a tomb. This is the end of the Hall, she thought as she walked through its forest of giant marble columns. The Stewards were dead, and once the wards fell, the Hall itself would be overrun.
Above the dais, the four empty thrones took on a frightening significance. The Shadow Kings are coming home. They had ruled here once, before the Dark King had twisted them into his servants. It made her all the more certain that it would come here, to the great hall, and that this was the place where she might for a moment or two slow it down.
She closed and barred the giant doors just as the Stewards had done. Unlike the Stewards, she knew that closing the doors was useless. It can get through the walls. It can get through anything. She only hoped that extra barrier might buy her a little more time.
And then she waited, her breathing shallow, listening to the inhuman screams of the Shadow King. When they started to get closer, she knew that it was coming. It was the last sound that the Stewards had heard as they stood in their ranks facing the doors, not knowing what was on the other side. But there were no Stewards left to fight what was coming.
She was surprised how much she wanted Cyprian to be with her. Or Will. How much she wanted someone to stand beside her, so that at the end, she wouldn’t be alone.
But Justice had been right. How you faced darkness was a test.
She felt the temperature start to drop, the shadows start to lengthen.
And against the cold and rising dark, she drew her sword.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
‘SO YOU KNOW who you are,’ said a voice behind Will.
He turned.
A pale figure was approaching across the blackened landscape, surreal yet somehow inevitable. It was Devon … Devon, the last unicorn, arriving like a herald from some ancient battle.
In London, Devon had recognised him. That scene played out in Will’s mind, now full of different meaning. The terrible, sickening truth of his own identity made him shiver now that he’d tested it for himself.