Rhy curled his fingers around the spelled circlet of gold, waiting to feel the heat of Kell’s summons, and only then did he realize how helpless he truly was. How useless to Kell. He could summon his brother, but Kell wouldn’t—or couldn’t—ever summon him.

Rhy slumped back against the pillows, clutching the pin to his chest.

The pain was already fading, an echo of an echo, a tide receding, leaving only dull discomfort and fear in its wake.

He’d never get back to sleep.

The decanters on the sideboard glinted in the low firelight, calling, and he rose to pour himself a drink, adding a single drop of Tieren’s tonic to the amber liquid. Rhy raised the glass to his lips, but didn’t swallow. Something else had caught his eye. His armor. It lay stretched like a sleeping body on his sofa, gauntleted arms folded on its chest. There was no need of it now, not with the city fast asleep, but it still called to him, louder than the tonic, louder even than the darkness—always worst before dawn.

Rhy set the glass aside, and took up the golden helm.

VIII

Myths do not happen all at once.

They do not spring forth whole into the world. They form slowly, rolled between the hands of time until their edges smooth, until the saying of the story gives enough weight to the words—to the memories—to keep them rolling on their own.

But all stories start somewhere, and that night, as Rhy Maresh walked through the streets of London, a new myth was taking shape.

This was the story of a prince who watched over his city as it slept. Who went on foot, for fear of trampling one of the fallen, who wove his way between the bodies of his people.

Some would say he moved in silence, with only the gentle clang of his golden-armored steps echoing like distant bells through the silent street.

Some would say he spoke, that even in the far-off darkness, the sleeping heard him whisper, over and over, “You are not alone.”

Some would say it never happened at all.

Indeed, there was no one there to see.

But Rhy did walk among them, because he was their prince, and because he could not sleep, and because he knew what it was like to be held by a spell, to be dragged into darkness, to be bound to something and yet feel utterly alone.

A sheen of frost was settling over his people, making them look more like statues than men and women and children. The prince had seen fallen trees slowly swallowed by moss, pieces of the world slowly reclaimed, and as he moved through the crowd of fallen, he wondered what would happen if London stayed under this spell a month, a season, a year.

Would the world climb up over the sleeping bodies?

Would it claim them, inch by inch?

It began to snow in earnest (strange, close as they were to spring, but not the strangest thing befalling London, then), and so Rhy brushed the ice from still cheeks, tore canvas down from the ghostly bones of the night market, and took blankets from homes now haunted only with the memories of breath. And patiently, the prince covered each and every person he found, though they did not seem to feel the cold beneath their shrouded safety of spellwork and sleep.

The chill ate at the prince’s fingers. It seeped through armor and into aching skin, but Rhy did not turn back, did not break his vigil until the first light of day broke the shell of darkness and the dawn thinned the frost. Only then did the prince return to the palace, and fall into bed, and sleep.

I

Dawn broke in silence over the Ghost.

They’d dumped the bodies overboard—Hano, with her throat cut, and Ilo, whom they’d found dead below, Jasta, who’d betrayed them all, and every last one of the Serpents.

Hastra alone had been wrapped in a blanket. Kell fastened the fabric carefully around the boy’s legs, waist, shoulders, sparing his face—the shy smile gone, the glossy curls now lank—as long as possible.

Sailors went into the sea, but Hastra wasn’t a sailor. He was a royal guard.

If they’d had flowers on the ship, Kell would have laid one on the rent over Hastra’s heart—that was the custom, in Arnes, to mark a mortal wound.

He thought of the blossom waiting back in the Basin, the one Hastra had made for Kell that day, coaxing life from a clod of dirt, a drop of water, a seed, the sum more than its parts, a sliver of light in a darkening world. Would it still be there, when they returned home? Or had it already withered?

If Lenos were there, he could have said something, sent a prayer to the nameless saints, but Lenos was gone too, lost to the tide, and Kell didn’t have any flowers, didn’t have any prayers, didn’t have anything but the hollow anger swimming in his heart.

“Anoshe,” he murmured as the body went over the side.

They should have cleaned the deck, but there seemed no point. The Ghost—what was left of it—would reach Tanek within the day.

His body swayed with fatigue.

He hadn’t slept. None of them had.

Holland was focused on keeping wind in the sails while Alucard stood numbly at the wheel—power was precious, but Lila had insisted on healing the captain’s wounds. Kell supposed he couldn’t fault her. Alucard Emery had done his share to keep the ship afloat.

Lila herself stood nearby, tipping the Faroan gems from hand to hand, staring down at the blue chips, her brow furrowed in thought.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I killed a Faroan once,” she mused, tipping the gems back into her first hand. “During the tournament.”

“You what?” started Kell, hoping he’d misheard, that he wouldn’t feel compelled to mention this to Rhy—or worse, Maxim—once they docked. “When would you have—”