A Star Shall Fall

Irrith choked. Had Galen told her? The horrific words she’d flung at him, telling him he was damned to Hell—the Prince was shaking his head. “No,” he said, equally quiet. “I have been in meditation for days now, preparing. I must not lose this. Let us speak to the court, and be done.”

The Queen did not press the question again. Throat aching with unsaid words, Irrith followed the small procession out of the workshop, toward the great presence chamber, where Galen would be made Prince no more.

* * *

It had been done once before, Irrith knew, divesting a Prince of his title. Michael Deven gave over the position before his own death, so that “Prince of the Stone” would be an office passed from man to man, rather than a privilege belonging to him alone.

But there was no replacement waiting for Galen. Amadea had spent the past eleven days assembling a list; there were possibilities. None were gentlemen. Lune would choose from among them after this was done—if there was still an Onyx Hall left.

Galen surrendered to Lune the London Sword, the central piece of their royal regalia. She released him from his obligations as Prince, with many fine phrases. All of it was for show. Many of the watching fae knew by now about the London Stone, if not where its faerie side lay; they knew the true release would come in that hidden chamber, where Lune had once bound Galen to the keystone of their realm. Even Michael Deven had never renounced that bond. But this ceremony served its own purpose, because the enchantments of the Hall were not the only things that needed to bid the Prince farewell.

Lune faced her court and spoke, pitching her voice so it carried to the far corners of the chamber, and up into the crystal panes high above. “Once the sun sets, we will be redeemed from the threat that has haunted us since the days of Charles II. Galen St. Clair, though Prince no more, will render unto us the greatest gift any man can bestow. He will lay down his life, binding the spirit of fire to his own mortality, and in doing so will destroy it. Remember this. Remember him. Let the Onyx Hall honour his sacrifice, until the last stone falls, and the last faerie departs from England’s shores.”

The wave spread outward from the dais, fae kneeling upon the cold marble. Perfect silence followed in their wake, as if all the court held its breath. Then footsteps: uneven, two no longer walking as one. Hand in hand, Galen and the Queen descended and crossed the chamber, going out through the great bronze portal, which shut behind them with a sound like the closing of a mausoleum door.

THE MONUMENT, LONDON

30 April 1759

The sun died a bloody death on the eastern horizon, staining the last remaining shreds of cloud with crimson light. London still bustled with evening activity, carters and porters and housewives exchanging familiar curses, but it was distant and muffled. Magic as strong as that used to hide the Moor Fields for Midsummer cloaked this little yard, clearing it for the use of the fae.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London dominated the space, its squat, square base ringed about with carving. Three sides bore Latin inscriptions; the fourth bore an elaborate allegory of the City’s destruction. Irrith had paced past it six times already, and hated the work more with each turn. That stiff image did not begin to describe the infernal horror of those days.

But it was easier to look at the carvings than the pillar above. The Monument soared two hundred and two feet into the darkening air, an enormous, isolated column, crowned with an urn of gilt-bronze flames. Tiny shadows moved up there: the von das Tickens, placing the lenses and mirrors Schuyler had made for this purpose. The comet, they said, haunted the southern horizon, beneath the constellation of Hydra, just on the edge of twilight. Once they arranged their equipment and opened the hatch in the urn, they would banish the few remaining clouds; and then someone would be able to look up from the bottom chamber and see the comet.

Galen would be able to look. Irrith’s gut twisted into a knot.

The spear-knights waited on the paving stones of the Monument Yard, armed and armored and protected by the tithe. Bonecruncher led a troop of goblins in support. They, like Irrith, carried guns loaded with iron shot, and knives made from leftover slivers of the jotun ice. The rest of the Onyx Guard were stationed at the entrances to the palace, in case all failed, and the beast escaped them. If Galen’s own mortality didn’t kill the Dragon, they would.

They hoped.

Irrith halted near the door into the Monument, because there was movement at the edge of the yard. The procession was a small one: just Lune, Sir Peregrin Thorne, his half-human son Edward, and Galen. No Delphia St. Clair. Irrith didn’t blame her for not coming to watch her husband die.