A Star Shall Fall

An entrance. She shouldn’t be surprised: that was the central point, where faerie and mortal London merged into one. Galen was already staggering past the Monument’s base, stumbling like a gin-soaked beggar, but moving with speed. The mortal face of the London Stone was almost as close as Billingsgate. Irrith hurried after him, flinging a concealment over them both, so that no one would try to stop the half-dressed man and the faerie that was chasing him.

They dodged the carts and carriages, sedan chairs and people on foot that still crowded Fish Street Hill, then turned onto the lane that became Cannon Street a little farther down. Irrith could see the spire of St. Swithin’s up ahead, hard by the Stone, which lay now on the north side of the street. They were almost there when Galen’s foot caught against something in the muck and he went down again, collapsing heavily to the ground.

“Hang your pride,” Irrith muttered, and caught up to the fallen man. She could at least support him, if not carry him. Before Galen could protest, she slipped one arm under his chest and lifted him to his feet.

His skin burnt hot through the thin fabric of his shirt.

“You’re feverish,” she said, foolishly—and then she saw his eyes.

Pupil, iris, and white: all gone, replaced by blazing flame.

Instinct sent her leaping backward, an instant before his hand could close on her throat. Curses flooded through her mind, panicked and incoherent. This wasn’t the Dragon they’d fought before, the ravening, near-mindless beast, its cunning limited only to destruction. No, they’d given it a human mind, a clever one. A mind that knew all about the Onyx Hall: not just its power but its secrets, from the Calendar Room to the truth of the London Stone.

The beast that wore Galen’s body shuddered, an inhuman, spine-twisting ripple. Irrith flinched on instinct, remembering that motion from the infernal days of the Fire—

But nothing happened.

She smelled smoke, the dreadfully appealing scent of meat on the spit—but no flames leapt out at her. The blazing eyes widened. Then the Dragon, realizing its powers were limited by human flesh, did the only thing it could.

It ran for the Stone.

Irrith hurled herself after. She was the faster of the two, and knocked her quarry sprawling a second time. They narrowly missed a maid, sleepily yawning her way down the dark street. An inhuman snarl rose from Galen’s throat, and a foot slammed into her face, hard enough that Irrith saw stars. She rolled free, then forced herself to her feet once more, because a single thought survived the impact of his foot: I have to keep it from the Stone.

They were already at Abchurch Lane. Irrith snatched out one of her pistols and fired, but running spoiled her aim; her shot chipped the front of a shop. Swearing, she dragged out the other and halted for an instant, concentrating on Galen’s back.

Her second shot flew more true—but not true enough. It struck his hip, spinning him into the brick wall at his side, scarcely three paces from his goal.

Irrith was already running again. She dropped both spent pistols to the ground and drew her last weapon, the knife of jotun ice. He knocked her aside as she came near, but the blow served her purposes well enough; it threw her that last bit of distance, putting her between Galen and the London Stone.

No. It isn’t Galen. Galen died inside the Monument.

But to her horror, she saw something of him in the twisted snarl on his face. “Irrith,” he said, spitting her name like a curse. “Traitor one day, faithful the next. Can’t you change your mind one more time? For me?”

She tightened her grip on the knife. Its cold seared her hand; the Dragon kept well clear of it as he pushed himself away from the wall. His shirt was beginning to smoke, tiny flames curling up where his skin pressed against the fabric. “Odd,” she said breathlessly, trying to delay long enough for her still-spinning head to settle. The Stone was a hard presence just behind her back. If he got so much as a finger on it… “You know the things Galen knows—knew—and yet you don’t know me at all.”

He laughed, and the sound itself burnt her. “Don’t I? I know you’re a coward. You could have loved me, but you were too afraid. Not of the grief—of the possibility that your love would never be returned. That even that ultimate gift couldn’t draw me away from my hopeless devotion to Lune, and you would be left as I was, grovelling after someone forever out of your reach.”

“Don’t say that word,” Irrith snarled, past the choking knot in her throat. “I. You aren’t Galen.”

“Half of me is.”

“The body means nothing.”

“All of the body; half of the spirit. That’s what the alchemy meant, Irrith. A wedding of two separate spirits into one, cleaving unto each other like man and wife. Though in this case, the man is the wife.” The Dragon twisted Galen’s mouth into a travesty of a smile. “He welcomed the fire in like a demon lover.”