Osaron cocked his head. “We shall see.”

The darkness forced its way in.

It was not a wave, but an ocean, and Maxim felt his will give way beneath the weight of Osaron’s power. There was no air. No light. No surface.

Emira. Rhy. Kell.

The arrows drove deep, the pain an anchor, but Maxim’s mind was already breaking apart, and his body tore further as he pulled with the last of his strength on his steel guards. Gauntlets tightened and a dozen short swords rose into the air, points turning toward the center of their circle as Osaron poured himself like molten metal into the body of Maxim Maresh.

And the king began to burn.

His mind guttered, his life failed, but not before a dozen steel points sang through the air, driving toward the source of their spell.

Toward Maxim’s body.

His heart.

He stopped fighting. It was like setting down a heavy weight, the dazzling relief of letting go. Osaron’s voice laughed through his head, but he was already falling, already gone, when the blades found home.

II

Across the city of London, the darkness began to thin.

The deep gloom drew back, and the shining black pane of the river cracked, giving way, here and there, to violent ribbons of red as Osaron’s hold faltered, slipped.

Maxim Maresh’s body knelt in the street, a dozen swords driven in to the hilt. Blood pooled beneath him in a rich red slick, and for a few long moments, the body did not move. The only sound came from the drip-drip-drip of the dead king’s blood hitting stone, the whistle of wind through the sleeping streets.

And then, after a long moment, Maxim’s corpse rose.

It shuddered, like a curtain in a breeze, and then a sword drew itself free of the ruined chest and clattered to the ground. And then another, and another, one by one until all twelve blades were out, lengths of crimson steel lying in the street. Smoke began to leak in thin tendrils from every wound before drawing together into a cloud, then a shadow, and then, at last, something like a man. It took several tries, the darkness collapsing back into smoke again and again before finally managing to hold its shape, its edges wavering unsteadily as its chest rose and fell in smoldering breaths.

“I am king,” snarled the shadow as the whorls of red in the river vanished, and the mist thickened.

But the nightmare’s hold was not quite as strong as it had been.

Osaron let out a growl of anger as his limbs dissolved, reformed. The spellwork etched into those swords still ran like ice through the veins of his power, stamping out heat and smothering flame. Such a stupid little spell, driven in so deep.

Osaron scowled down at the king’s corpse, finally kneeling before him.

“All men bow.”

Shadowy fingers flicked, once, and the body toppled, lifeless, to the ground.

Insolent mortal, thought the shadow king as he turned and stormed back across the sleeping city and up the bridge and into his palace, fuming as he struggled with every step to hold his shape. When his hand grazed a column, it went straight through as if he were nothing.

But the false king was dead, and Osaron lived on. It would take more than spelled metal, more than one man’s magic, to kill a god.

The shadow king climbed the stairs to his throne and sat, smoking hands curled around the arms of his seat.

These mortals thought they were strong, thought they were clever, but they were nothing but children in this world—Osaron’s world—and he had lived long enough to take their measure.

They had no idea what he was capable of.

The shadow king closed his eyes and opened his mind, reaching past the palace, past the city, past the world, to the very edges of his power.

Just as a tree might know itself, from deepest root to topmost leaf, Osaron knew every inch of his magic. And so he reached, and reached, and reached, grasping in the dark until he felt her there. Or rather, felt what was left of him inside her.

“Ojka.”

Osaron knew, of course, that she was dead. Gone, blown away as all things were in time. He had felt the moment when it happened, even that small death rippling his psyche, the sudden sense of loss pale but palpable.

And yet—Osaron still ran through her. He was in her blood. That blood might no longer flow, but he still lived in it, his will a filament, a thread of wire woven through her straw body. Her consciousness was gone, her own will forfeit, but her form was still a form. A vessel.

And so Osaron filled the silence of her mind, and wrapped his will around her limbs.

“Ojka,” he said again. “Get up.”

III

WHITE LONDON

Nasi always knew when something was wrong.

It was a gut knowing, come from years of watching faces, hands, reading all the little tells a person made before they did a bad thing.

It wasn’t a person going wrong now.

It was a world.

A chill was back in the air, the castle windows frosting at the corners. The king was gone, still gone, and without him, London was getting bad again, getting worse. The world felt like it was unraveling around her, all the color and life bleeding out the way it must have done the first time, all those years ago. Only according to the stories that was slow, and this was quick, like a snake shedding a skin.

And Nasi knew she wasn’t the only one who felt it.

All of London seemed to sense the wrongness.

A few members of the king’s Iron Guard, those still loyal to his cause, were doing their best to keep things from getting out of hand. The castle was under constant watch. Nasi hadn’t been able to sneak out again, so she didn’t have fresh flowers—not that many had survived the sudden chill—to lay near Ojka’s body.