Kell spun, looking for Lila, but couldn’t see her through the crowd, the smoke.

And then, suddenly, the darkness turned on him.

No, thought Kell, who had already refused the monster once. He couldn’t fathom another collar. The cold horror of a heartbeat stopping in his chest.

The darkness surged toward him, and Kell took an involuntary step back, bracing himself for an assault that never came. The shadow brushed his blood-streaked fingers, and pulled back, not so much repelled as considering.

The darkness laughed—a sickly sound—and began to draw itself together, to coalesce into a column, and then into a man. Not flesh and blood, but layered shadow, so dense it looked like fluid stone, some edges sharp and others blurred. A crown sat atop the figure’s head, a dozen spires thrust upward like horns, their points faded into smoke.

The shadow king, in his true form.

Osaron drew in a breath, and the molten darkness at his center flared like embers, heat rippling the air around him. And yet he seemed solid as stone. As Osaron considered his hands, the fingers tapering less to fingertips than points, his mouth stretched into a cruel smile.

“It has been a long time since I was strong enough to hold my own shape.”

His hand shot toward Kell’s throat, but was stopped short as steel came singing through the air. Lila’s knife caught Osaron in the side of the head, but the blade didn’t lodge; it passed straight through.

So he wasn’t real, wasn’t corporeal. Not yet.

Osaron spared a glance at Lila, who was already drawing another blade. She slammed to a stop under his gaze, her body clearly straining against his hold, and Kell stole his chance once more, pressing his bloodstained palm to the creature’s chest. But the shape turned to smoke around Kell’s fingers, recoiling from his magic, and Osaron twisted back, annoyance etched across his stone features. Freed once more, Lila reached him, a guard’s short sword in one hand, and swung the weapon in a vicious arc, carving down and across and through his body, shoulder to hip.

Osaron parted around the blade, and then he simply dissolved.

There one moment, and gone the next.

Kell and Lila stared at each other, breathless, stunned.

The guards were hauling an unconscious Holland roughly to his feet, his head lolling as, all around the roof, the men and woman stood as if under a spell, though it might have simply been shock, horror, confusion.

Kell met King Maxim’s eyes across the roof.

“You have so much to learn.”

He spun toward the sound, and found Osaron re-formed and standing, not in the broken center of the roof, but atop the railing at its edge, as if the spine of metal were solid ground. His cloak billowed in the breeze. A specter of a man. A shadow of a monster.

“You do not slay a god,” he said. “You worship him.”

His black eyes danced with dark delight.

“Do not worry. I will teach you how. And in time …”

Osaron spread his arms.

“I will make this world worthy of me.”

Kell realized too late what was about to happen.

He started running just as Osaron tipped backward off the railing, and fell.

Kell sprinted, and got there just in time to see the shadow king hit the water of the Isle far below. His body struck without a splash, and as it broke the surface and sank, it began to plume like spilled ink through the current. Lila pressed against him, straining to see. Shouts were going up over the roof, but the two of them stood and watched in silent horror as the plume of darkness grew, and grew, and grew, spreading until the red of the river turned black.

III

Alucard paced the prince’s room, waiting for news.

He hadn’t heard anything since that single scream, the first shouts of guards in the hall, the steps above.

Rhy’s lush curtains and canopies, his plush carpets and pillows, all created a horrible insulation, blocking out the world beyond and shrouding the room in an oppressive silence.

They were alone, the captain and the sleeping prince.

The king was gone. The priests were gone. Even the queen was gone. One by one they’d peeled away, each casting a glance at Alucard that said, Sit, stay. As if he would have left. He would have gladly abandoned the maddening quiet and the smothering questions, of course, but not Rhy.

The queen had been the last to leave. For several seconds she’d stood between the bed and the doors, as if physically torn.

“Your Majesty,” he’d said. “I will keep him safe.”

Her face had changed, then, the regal mask slipping to reveal a frightened mother. “If only you could.”

“Can you?” he’d asked, and her wide brown eyes had gone to Rhy, lingering there for a long moment before at last she’d turned and fled.

Something drew his attention to the balcony. Not movement exactly, but a change in the light. When he approached the glass doors, he saw shadow spilling down the side of the palace like a train, a tail, a curtain of glossy black that shimmered, solid, smoke, solid, as it ran from the riverbank below all the way to the roof.

It had to be magic, but it had no color, no light. If it followed the warp and weft of power, he could not see the threads.

Kell had told them about Osaron, the poisonous magic from another London. But how could a magician do this? How could anyone?

“It’s a demon,” Kell had said. “A piece of living, breathing magic.”

“A piece of magic that thinks itself a man?” asked the king.

“No,” he’d answered. “A piece of magic that thinks itself a god.”