Then you will die, said the Shadow King.
A torrent of darkness, it rushed at her with shocking speed, dark sword upraised. Instinct – she dived and rolled, feeling a burst of cold to her left as the King barely missed her. She came up low, just as she’d been trained, and swung, her sword cleaving it from behind—
— and passing right through it as though it wasn’t there.
A disorienting sensation like missing a step. It was like hitting nothing, like swinging at a phantasm. Carried forward by her own momentum, she stumbled. And in the swirl of darkness, it seemed she saw a King in ancient armour, and in its eyes the end of the world, a desire to conquer and to rule, all of humanity bound to it, and all she knew turned to ashes and ruin.
As its blade came down to cleave her in two, she desperately pulled up her own sword—
—the sword of the Shadow King passed through her own as though it wasn’t there. Nothing can stop them. Nothing can hold them back. Her eyes widened and she jerked sideways, too late, the dark sword slicing her cheek and then cutting deep into her shoulder with a sensation of burning cold, and a splatter of blood hitting the stone beneath her feet.
She cried out and gritted her teeth through the pain, forcing herself to keep hold of her weapon, though her arm was burning. Why? Why was she holding a sword if she couldn’t fight with it? Her weapon couldn’t hurt the Shadow King. Nothing could hurt it, its body as insubstantial as the shadow for which it was named.
The nightmarish truth sank in. The Elder Steward was right. This was an enemy that no mortal could fight. This was the horror each of the Stewards had faced: years of training, strength gained at a terrible price. None of it meant anything to a shadow.
She understood then that she was going to die – she had seen the splintered furniture, the strewn weapons, even the dried blood visible in the last flickering flame from the torches.
And that was the destruction left by Marcus, a single shadow who was as nothing to this nightmarish King, who was more powerful than any Steward, more powerful than any of the great heroes who had ever walked this earth, let alone a single girl.
I can’t beat it, she thought. But I can hold on long enough for Cyprian and Elizabeth to escape the Hall.
She thought of Justice – of the wreckage that had surrounded his body when they’d found him. Marcus had torn the corridor apart to get at him. No, not Marcus. The inhuman thing that had taken Marcus’s place. Justice must have realised that he couldn’t fight it, and simply tried to evade it as long as he could, as the corridor was destroyed around him. He had bought Grace and Sarah a handful of minutes … enough time for the Elder Steward to arrive.
But there was no Elder Steward to come and save her. And not even the Elder Steward could have fought the Shadow King, for it was greater than any shadow, and master of them all.
Justice, I never finished my training. I was never a Steward. But you told me my sword could protect people. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Cyprian and Elizabeth would be at the stables, saddling Nell and the last of the horses. Soon they would start their ride across the marshes, riding double with Grace and Sarah. East – Cyprian would know better than to lead them back to London, where a Shadow King’s attack would hurt others, the black skies of its arrival terrifying the city.
If she could just hold it off a little longer, they’d have time to reach the gate—
Keep it here, she thought. Keep it occupied. Let them get away.
She ran, sprinting for the columns with a torrent of darkness at her back. Her arm was screaming at her, her breath gasping in her throat. She thought she could use the columns to weave and circle, but the Shadow King simply came through the marble, a rushing dark that nothing could stop. A burst of black sent her flying backward to smash hard into the far wall by the thrones.
Blinking to try to focus, dazed. Get up. Get up. Her heel slid, her movements clumsy. Pain lanced through her shoulder as she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, collapsed, then tried to push up again. The freezing cold told her the Shadow King was there, towering above her in its horrifying majesty. She looked up at it, barely able to crawl, with her sword missing somewhere in the rubble.
She couldn’t stand. She had no weapon. This was the end, and it wasn’t enough. She hadn’t given Elizabeth and Cyprian enough time.
She saw a dull gleam of metal near her outstretched fingers. Instinctively, she grabbed at it, too wounded to dodge. As the Shadow King’s sword descended, she threw it up desperately to cover herself.
It was the old broken piece of a shield.