Katherine held the sword triumphant, and for a moment, Will felt his own foolish burst of part fear, part hope.
And then black tendrils began to creep up Katherine’s hands where she held the blade out in front of her. ‘Will?’ she said. Veins of black were travelling up her arm under her skin. ‘Will, what’s happening?’ She was trying to let go of the blade and she couldn’t, as the spidery black webbing raced towards her heart, then up her neck to her face.
He was running the four paces towards her, catching her in the moment that she collapsed, pale and cold. He was cradling her in his arms as he knelt in the mud. Her eyes were two black orbs that were freezing over, the sun eclipsing. Her veins were hard as onyx, as though her blood had turned to stone. ‘Will, I’m frightened.’ The words were a whisper, her lips barely moving.
No champion saved her. They were the last words she said.
He held on to her for a long time after, as if his grip could keep her with him. He held on so tight his fingers ached. He felt as if he had been locked in this ache forever. As if the two deaths were one death, the promise that he’d made and broken in the same place, this place that had taken both of them. Mother, and – what? Lover? Sister? Enemy? Friend? He didn’t know what she might have been to him. He only knew that the fate that bound them together had brought her here.
He heard footsteps approaching behind him, crunching in the black dirt.
‘Now you have everything you wanted,’ said Devon. ‘Your usurper is vanquished. The Stewards are dead. The line of the Lady has ended. There’s nothing left to stand in your way.’ Devon spoke as if his business was complete. ‘Katherine had a sister, but the last Shadow King remains free and will already have found her. That little girl is dead now too.’
Will lifted his head, looking up at him and speaking in a new voice.
‘No,’ said Will. ‘I sent her a Lion.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
VIOLET STOOD WITH her sword outstretched, her eyes fixed on the doors.
Outside, the sky was black. Even the strange red light had faded from the windows. The wards are down. It was almost pitch-black in the great hall, the dark of an eclipse, or of being enclosed in a tomb. Only the three flickering torches that she had lit made a small island of light, where the marble columns were pale shapes that disappeared into the dark.
The rest of the light had been stolen, making a shadow world in the middle of the day.
The blast of an inhuman scream – so loud the foundations shook – the stone shuddering—
Outside. It was right outside the doors. Her grip tightened on her sword.
For a moment, silence: the only sound that of her breathing. It was so cold that her breath hung whitely suspended in front of her. And then it got colder. Violet thought she was prepared for it. Grace had described it: a creature of shadows, a formless shape, hard to fight. But then it began to come through.
Darkness; a gaping pit that drew all light into itself. Violet couldn’t drag her eyes away. The spreading black felt like standing at the edge of an abyss and wanting to throw herself in. She was looking at death, oncoming, unstoppable; the end of everything.
A Shadow King.
It came alone. A single King was enough to tear down the wards that had protected the Hall for centuries. The Stewards were nothing to it. This world was nothing to it. She could feel the power that could destroy anything it wished, and knew that nothing could stand against it.
The four empty thrones were behind her. She could feel its desire to take its rightful place, to rule, to crush this world into utter subjugation.
‘I’m Violet Ballard, Lion of the old world,’ she said, her voice small in the cavernous hall. ‘You won’t get past me.’
She felt its attention slowly turn to her, the swivel of an unnatural eye. Its ancient robes spread out around it, shadowy and grand as a tomb. Its sepulchral crown lay atop half face, half bone. The flickering armour of a king; a sword that burned with cold; armies in its eyes. She could almost taste the worms of the grave.
Lion. The word went right through her, the cold terror of recognition; it knew her, knew her power, knew her blood. I am here for the Lady.
‘I won’t let you have her.’ Louder this time, her grip on the sword hilt tight.
She was breathing shallowly. Thousands of Lions dead on the battlefield, mighty commanders and their armies embalmed in darkness, unicorns lying slaughtered – the enemy in front of her had fought them all, and before that had been a man, who had put his pale hand around a cup. The vast columns of the hall were like an ancient forest, extending out into the dark, a spectral landscape of a vanished world.